| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Caesar's Commentaries in Latin by Julius Caesar: bello persequi perseveraret, reminisceretur et veteris incommodi populi
Romani et pristinae virtutis Helvetiorum. Quod improviso unum pagum
adortus esset, cum ii qui flumen transissent suis auxilium ferre non
possent, ne ob eam rem aut suae magnopere virtuti tribueret aut ipsos
despiceret. Se ita a patribus maioribusque suis didicisse, ut magis
virtute contenderent quam dolo aut insidiis niterentur. Quare ne
committeret ut is locus ubi constitissent ex calamitate populi Romani et
internecione exercitus nomen caperet aut memoriam proderet.
His Caesar ita respondit: eo sibi minus dubitationis dari, quod eas
res quas legati Helvetii commemorassent memoria teneret, atque eo gravius
ferre quo minus merito populi Romani accidissent; qui si alicuius iniuriae
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: made into great flakes, with pressure of weighty timber, when they
are green.... The meaner sort are covered with mats which they make
of a kind of bulrush, and are also indifferently tight and warm, but
not so good as the former.... Some I have seen, sixty or a hundred
feet long and thirty feet broad.... I have often lodged in their
wigwams, and found them as warm as the best English houses." He
adds that they were commonly carpeted and lined within with
well-wrought embroidered mats, and were furnished with various
utensils. The Indians had advanced so far as to regulate the effect
of the wind by a mat suspended over the hole in the roof and moved
by a string. Such a lodge was in the first instance constructed in
Walden |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: obtained?
CRITIAS: It seems to me that they are all useful for building.
SOCRATES: And is it not true of every art, that not only the materials but
the instruments by which we procure them and without which the work could
not go on, are useful for that art?
CRITIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And further, the instruments by which the instruments are
procured, and so on, going back from stage to stage ad infinitum,--are not
all these, in your opinion, necessary in order to carry out the work?
CRITIAS: We may fairly suppose such to be the case.
SOCRATES: And if a man has food and drink and clothes and the other things
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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 Turn of the Screw by Henry James: as if one of the trees of the park had fallen across the road.
There was something new, on the spot, between us, and he was
perfectly aware that I recognized it, though, to enable me to do so,
he had no need to look a whit less candid and charming than usual.
I could feel in him how he already, from my at first finding
nothing to reply, perceived the advantage he had gained.
I was so slow to find anything that he had plenty of time,
after a minute, to continue with his suggestive but inconclusive smile:
"You know, my dear, that for a fellow to be with a lady ALWAYS--!"
His "my dear" was constantly on his lips for me, and nothing
could have expressed more the exact shade of the sentiment with
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