| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: neighborhood, just when he had planned to move from the Rue du
Fouarre, which he as little liked to live in as his wife did. The
great lawyer, the clear-sighted criminal judge, whose superiority
seemed to his colleagues a form of aberration, had for five years been
watching legal results without seeing their causes. As he scrambled up
into the lofts, as he saw the poverty, as he studied the desperate
necessities which gradually bring the poor to criminal acts, as he
estimated their long struggles, compassion filled his soul. The judge
then became the Saint Vincent de Paul of these grown-up children,
these suffering toilers. The transformation was not immediately
complete. Beneficence has its temptations as vice has. Charity
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Deputy of Arcis by Honore de Balzac: was ridiculous (a serious princely defect in France); he bore the
brunt of a new and untried regime; he succeeded a government which had
intoxicated the people with that splendid gilded smoke called glory;
and if he was not actually brought back to France by foreigners, at
any rate he came as the result of the armed invasion of Europe. Now,
shall I tell you why, in spite of all these defects and disadvantages,
in spite, too, of the ceaseless conspiracy kept up against his
government, it was given to him to die tranquilly in his bed at the
Tuileries?"
"Because he had made himself a constitutional king," said Rastignac,
with a slight shrug of his shoulders. "But do you mean to say that we
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tao Teh King by Lao-tze: 2. The multitude of men look satisfied and pleased; as if enjoying a
full banquet, as if mounted on a tower in spring. I alone seem
listless and still, my desires having as yet given no indication of
their presence. I am like an infant which has not yet smiled. I look
dejected and forlorn, as if I had no home to go to. The multitude of
men all have enough and to spare. I alone seem to have lost
everything. My mind is that of a stupid man; I am in a state of
chaos.
Ordinary men look bright and intelligent, while I alone seem to be
benighted. They look full of discrimination, while I alone am dull
and confused. I seem to be carried about as on the sea, drifting as
|
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 Silas Marner by George Eliot: held to be sinful regret in herself, that made her shrink from
applying her own standard to her husband. "It is very different--
it is much worse for a man to be disappointed in that way: a woman
can always be satisfied with devoting herself to her husband, but a
man wants something that will make him look forward more--and
sitting by the fire is so much duller to him than to a woman." And
always, when Nancy reached this point in her meditations--trying,
with predetermined sympathy, to see everything as Godfrey saw it--
there came a renewal of self-questioning. _Had_ she done everything
in her power to lighten Godfrey's privation? Had she really been
right in the resistance which had cost her so much pain six years
Silas Marner |
