| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain: judged that by and by when they got to be numerous
enough they would begin to look ridiculous; and then,
even the steel-clad ass that HADN'T any board would
himself begin to look ridiculous because he was out of
the fashion.
Secondly, these missionaries would gradually, and
without creating suspicion or exciting alarm, introduce
a rudimentary cleanliness among the nobility, and from
them it would work down to the people, if the priests
could be kept quiet. This would undermine the
Church. I mean would be a step toward that. Next,
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Common Sense by Thomas Paine: by WHOSE _NOD ALONE_ THEY WERE PERMITTED TO DO ANY THING."
This is toryism with a witness! Here is idolatry even without a mask:
And he who can calmly hear, and digest such doctrine,
hath forfeited his claim to rationality an apostate
from the order of manhood; and ought to be considered as one,
who hath not only given up the proper dignity of man,
but sunk himself beneath the rank of animals,
and contemptibly crawl through the world like a worm.
However, it matters very little now, what the king of England
either says or does; he hath wickedly broken through every
moral and human obligation, trampled nature and conscience
Common Sense |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Europeans by Henry James: "But it was all over there--beyond the sea. I don't see any here.
This is a paradise."
Gertrude said nothing; she sat looking at the dahlias and the
currant-bushes in the garden, while Felix went on with his work.
"To 'enjoy,' " she began at last, "to take life--not painfully,
must one do something wrong?"
Felix gave his long, light laugh again. "Seriously, I think not.
And for this reason, among others: you strike me as very capable
of enjoying, if the chance were given you, and yet at the same time
as incapable of wrong-doing."
"I am sure," said Gertrude, "that you are very wrong
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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 Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: for big, empty words. If you ask yourself what you mean by
fame, riches, or learning, the answer is far to seek; and you
go back into that kingdom of light imaginations, which seem so
vain in the eyes of Philistines perspiring after wealth, and
so momentous to those who are stricken with the disproportions
of the world, and, in the face of the gigantic stars, cannot
stop to split differences between two degrees of the
infinitesimally small, such as a tobacco pipe or the Roman
Empire, a million of money or a fiddlestick's end.
You lean from the window, your last pipe reeking whitely
into the darkness, your body full of delicious pains, your
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