| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Brother of Daphne by Dornford Yates: "There was once," I said, "a fool." A smothered exclamation
close to my left ear. "A fool, who did everything wrong. He
lost his way, his heart, his head, and, last of all, his
b~balance. In that order. Yet he was proud. But then he was
only a fool."
"But he was- English," she murmured.
"Yes,"I said.
"And there was another fool," said Silvia. "A much bigger one,
really, because, although she never lost her way or her head or
her balance, she lost something much more precious. She lost her
temper."
The Brother of Daphne |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: reticence after another, much as we learn the heart of a friend, the
whole loveliness of the country. This disposition always preserves
something new to be seen, and takes us, like a careful cicerone, to
many different points of distant view before it allows us finally to
approach the hoped-for destination.
In its connection with the traffic, and whole friendly intercourse
with the country, there is something very pleasant in that succession
of saunterers and brisk and business-like passers-by, that peoples
our ways and helps to build up what Walt Whitman calls 'the cheerful
voice of the public road, the gay, fresh sentiment of the road.' But
out of the great network of ways that binds all life together from
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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 Options by O. Henry: East India tea-importing concerns that you read about in Dickens.
There were some rumors of a war behind its counters, but not enough to
affect the business.
During and after the war, Blandford Carteret, F.F.V., lost his
plantations, juleps, marksmanship, and life. He bequeathed little
more than his pride to his surviving family. So it came to pass that
Blandford Carteret, the Fifth, aged fifteen, was invited by the
leather-and-millsupplies branch of that name to come North and learn
business instead of hunting foxes and boasting of the glory of his
fathers on the reduced acres of his impoverished family. The boy
jumped at the chance; and, at the age of twenty-five, sat in the
Options |
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 Parmenides by Plato: And if all number participates in being, every part of number will also
participate?
Yes.
Then being is distributed over the whole multitude of things, and nothing
that is, however small or however great, is devoid of it? And, indeed, the
very supposition of this is absurd, for how can that which is, be devoid of
being?
In no way.
And it is divided into the greatest and into the smallest, and into being
of all sizes, and is broken up more than all things; the divisions of it
have no limit.
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