| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: lovers are a trifle condescending in their address to other
men. An overweening sense of the passion and importance of
life hardly conduces to simplicity of manner. To women, they
feel very nobly, very purely, and very generously, as if they
were so many Joan-of-Arc's; but this does not come out in
their behaviour; and they treat them to Grandisonian airs
marked with a suspicion of fatuity. I am not quite certain
that women do not like this sort of thing; but really, after
having bemused myself over DANIEL DERONDA, I have given up
trying to understand what they like.
If it did nothing else, this sublime and ridiculous
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: loom; as is likely, considering - and considering - and considering
-
And at last, after innumerable adventures, each more wonderful than
the last, he saw before him a huge building, much bigger, and -
what is most surprising - a little uglier than a certain new
lunatic asylum, but not built quite of the same materials. None of
it, at least - or, indeed, for aught that I ever saw, any part of
any other building whatsoever - is cased with nine-inch brick
inside and out, and filled up with rubble between the walls, in
order that any gentleman who has been confined during Her Majesty's
pleasure may be unconfined during his own pleasure, and take a walk
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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 The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: murmured, turning short away from me.
My compunction was real; I laid my hand on his shoulder. "I beg
you to forgive me - I've made a mistake. You don't know what I
thought you knew. You could, if I had been right, have rendered me
a service; and I had my reasons for assuming that you'd be in a
position to meet me."
"Your reasons?" he asked. "What were your reasons?"
I looked at him well; I hesitated; I considered. "Come and sit
down with me here, and I'll tell you." I drew him to a sofa, I
lighted another cigar and, beginning with the anecdote of Vereker's
one descent from the clouds, I recited to him the extraordinary
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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: from his belt, walked round the place, and perceived he had been
right in his conjectures.
An extremely narrow passage led aside out of the pit.
He had to stoop to look into it, and only by creeping could it
be followed; but as he wanted to see in which direction it led,
and whether another abyss opened from it, he lay down on the ground
and began to enter it on hands and knees.
An obstacle speedily arrested his progress. He fancied he could
perceive by touching it, that a human body lay across the passage.
A sudden thrill of horror and surprise made him hastily draw back,
but he again advanced and felt more carefully.
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