| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot: to execution.
Then the wretched rabble of the Isosceles, planless and leaderless,
are either transfixed without resistance by the small body
of their brethren whom the Chief Circle keeps in pay
for emergencies of this kind; or else more often, by means of
jealousies and suspicions skilfully fomented among them
by the Circular party, they are stirred to mutual warfare,
and perish by one another's angles. No less than one hundred
and twenty rebellions are recorded in our annals, besides minor
outbreaks numbered at two hundred and thirty-five;
and they have all ended thus.
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: spoil your dinners.
You housewifely good women, who not preside over the
confectionary, (henceforth commissioners of the Treasury) be so
good as to dispense the sugar-plumbs of the Government with a
more impartial and frugal hand.
Ye prudes and censorious old maids, (the hopes of the Bench)
exert but your usual talent of finding faults, and the laws will
be strictly executed; only I would not have you proceed upon such
slender evidences as you have done hitherto.
It is from you, eloquent oyster-merchants of Billingsgate, (just
ready to be called to the Bar, and quoif'd like your
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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 King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: I need not add more fuel to your fire,
For, well I wot, ye blaze to burn them out.
Give signal to the fight, and to it, lords.
QUEEN MARGARET.
Lords, knights, and gentlemen, what I should say,
My tears gainsay; for every word I speak,
Ye see I drink the water of my eyes.
Therefore, no more but this: Henry, your sovereign,
Is prisoner to the foe, his state usurp'd,
His realm a slaughter-house, his subjects slain,
His statutes cancell'd, and his treasure spent;
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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 Underground City by Jules Verne: rotten sleepers, now disused, were then constantly ground by the weight
of wagons. Now stony roads took the place of the old mining tramways.
James Starr felt as if he was traversing a desert.
The engineer gazed about him with a saddened eye.
He stopped now and then to take breath. He listened.
The air was no longer filled with distant whistlings and the panting
of engines. None of those black vapors which the manufacturer
loves to see, hung in the horizon, mingling with the clouds.
No tall cylindrical or prismatic chimney vomited out smoke,
after being fed from the mine itself; no blast-pipe was puffing
out its white vapor. The ground,
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