| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: mediocritas/ was but little satisfactory to Mme. de Marville. Even now
she wished for means more in accordance with her ambitions; for when
she handed over their fortune to their daughter, she spoiled her
husband's prospects. Now Amelie had set her heart upon seeing her
husband in the Chamber of Deputies; she was not one of those women who
find it easy to give up their way; and she by no means despaired of
returning her husband for the arrondissement in which Marville is
situated. So for the past two months she had teased her father-in-law,
M. le Baron Camusot (for the new peer of France had been advanced to
that rank), and done her utmost to extort an advance of a hundred
thousand francs of the inheritance which one day would be theirs. She
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: admit the resolution of all things into their elements to be a rational
explanation of them, and the consideration of them in syllables or larger
combinations of them to be irrational--is this your view?
THEAETETUS: Precisely.
SOCRATES: Well, and do you conceive that a man has knowledge of any
element who at one time affirms and at another time denies that element of
something, or thinks that the same thing is composed of different elements
at different times?
THEAETETUS: Assuredly not.
SOCRATES: And do you not remember that in your case and in that of others
this often occurred in the process of learning to read?
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: and patience, and a firm belief in all our fellow-men. If I
deceived this good old man, in the like manner I would willingly go
on to deceive others. And if ever at length, out of our separate
and sad ways, we should all come together into one common house, I
have a hope, to which I cling dearly, that my mountain Plymouth
Brother will hasten to shake hands with me again.
Thus, talking like Christian and Faithful by the way, he and I came
down upon a hamlet by the Tarn. It was but a humble place, called
La Vernede, with less than a dozen houses, and a Protestant chapel
on a knoll. Here he dwelt; and here, at the inn, I ordered my
breakfast. The inn was kept by an agreeable young man, a stone-
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: heaven. The chroniclers do not often pause in their narrations to
dwell on the moral aspects of the times, but Meyer, in his annals
of Flanders, under date of 1379, tells us that it would be
impossible to describe the prevalence everywhere of perjuries,
blasphemies, adulteries, hatreds, quarrels, brawls, murder,
rapine, thievery, robbery, gambling, whoredom debauchery,
avarice, oppression of the poor, rape, drunkenness: and similar
vices, and he illustrates his statement with the fact that in the
territory of Ghent, within the space of ten months, there
occurred no less than fourteen hundred murders committed in the
bagnios, brothels, gambling-houses, taverns, and other similar
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