| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: unknown, to the Inscrutable Creator of good and evil, to the Master of
doubts and impulses.
He stood still to look at her. Thrown back and with her face turned
away from him, she did not stir--as if asleep. What did she think?
What did she feel? And in the presence of her perfect stillness, in
the breathless silence, he felt himself insignificant and powerless
before her, like a prisoner in chains. The fury of his impotence
called out sinister images, that faculty of tormenting vision, which
in a moment of anguishing sense of wrong induces a man to mutter
threats or make a menacing gesture in the solitude of an empty room.
But the gust of passion passed at once, left him trembling a little,
Tales of Unrest |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: pitied, the more she excites our sympathies. We are only pitiless to
the commonplace. If, moreover, we attract all eyes, we are to all
intents and purposes great; how, indeed, are we to be seen unless we
raise ourselves above other people's heads? The common herd of
humanity feels an involuntary respect for any person who can rise
above it, and is not over-particular as to the means by which they
rise.
It may have been that some such motives influenced Gaston de Nueil at
unawares, or perhaps it was curiosity, or a craving for some interest
in his life, or, in a word, that crowd of inexplicable impulses which,
for want of a better name, we are wont to call "fatality," that drew
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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 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe: could go to the next gentleman's house to see for a service,
whereas,' said he, 'I knew not wither to go, or what to do
with myself.'
I told him I was so completely miserable in parting with him,
that I could not be worse; and that now he was come again,
I would not go from him, if he would take me with him, let
him go whither he would, or do what he would. And in the
meantime I agreed that we would go together to London; but
I could not be brought to consent he should go away at last
and not take his leave of me, as he proposed to do; but told
him, jesting, that if he did, I would call him back again as loud
Moll Flanders |
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 Theaetetus by Plato: synthesis of sensations, words, conceptions. In seeing or hearing or
looking or listening the sensible impression prevails over the conception
and the word. In reflection the process is reversed--the outward object
fades away into nothingness, the name or the conception or both together
are everything. Language, like number, is intermediate between the two,
partaking of the definiteness of the outer and of the universality of the
inner world. For logic teaches us that every word is really a universal,
and only condescends by the help of position or circumlocution to become
the expression of individuals or particulars. And sometimes by using words
as symbols we are able to give a 'local habitation and a name' to the
infinite and inconceivable.
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