| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: remorse that sometimes flitted through his soul in moments of
physical weariness.
He had drawn up a list of the wealth heaped up by the old
merchant in the East, and he became a miser: had he not to
provide for a second lifetime? His views of life were the more
profound and penetrating; he grasped its significance, as a
whole, the better, because he saw it across a grave. All men, all
things, he analyzed once and for all; he summed up the Past,
represented by its records; the Present in the law, its
crystallized form; the Future, revealed by religion. He took
spirit and matter, and flung them into his crucible, and found--
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: set its limitation to the evolution of ants, creatures which, having
reached a point of mental development in some respects almost as high as
that of man, have yet become curiously and immovably arrested. The whole
question of sex-parasitism among the lower animals is one throwing
suggestive and instructive side-lights on human social problems, but is too
extensive to be here entered on.)
Again and again in the history of the past, when among human creatures a
certain stage of material civilisation has been reached, a curious tendency
has manifested itself for the human female to become more or less
parasitic; social conditions tend to rob her of all forms of active,
conscious, social labour, and to reduce her, like the field-tick, to the
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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 Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne: exceeding a furlong, and they walked gently. Herrick was like
one in a dream. He had come there with a mind divided; come
prepared to study that ambiguous and sneering mask, drag out
the essential man from underneath, and act accordingly;
decision being till then postponed. Iron cruelty, an iron
insensibility to the suffering of others, the uncompromising
pursuit of his own interests, cold culture, manners without
humanity; these he had looked for, these he still thought he saw.
But to find the whole machine thus glow with the reverberation of
religious zeal, surprised him beyond words; and he laboured in
vain, as he walked, to piece together into any kind of whole his
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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 Lady Susan by Jane Austen: -and all this without the charm of youth! I am glad to find Miss Vernon
does not accompany her mother to Churchhill, as she has not even manners to
recommend her; and, according to Mr. Smith's account, is equally dull and
proud. Where pride and stupidity unite there can be no dissimulation worthy
notice, and Miss Vernon shall be consigned to unrelenting contempt; but by
all that I can gather Lady Susan possesses a degree of captivating deceit
which it must be pleasing to witness and detect. I shall be with you very
soon, and am ever,
Your affectionate brother,
R. DE COURCY.
V
Lady Susan |
