| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Adam Bede by George Eliot: this scene, and he was a man whose abundant feeding served to keep
his good nature, as well as his person, in high condition. And
that lovely tearful face of Hetty's would have found out the
sensitive fibre in most men.
"Come, young woman, come in," he said, "and have adrop o'
something; you're pretty well knocked up, I can see that."
He took her into the bar and said to his wife, "Here, missis, take
this young woman into the parlour; she's a little overcome"--for
Hetty's tears were falling fast. They were merely hysterical
tears: she thought she had no reason for weeping now, and was
vexed that she was too weak and tired to help it. She was at
Adam Bede |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: no longer mine, sails to-morrow, and I sail in her. I commit to you my
wife and daughter. I shall not write. No news must be taken as good
news."
Dumay, always subordinate, asked no questions of his colonel. "I
think," he said to Latournelle with a knowing little glance, "that my
colonel has a plan laid out."
The following day at dawn he accompanied his master on board the
"Modeste" bound for Constantinople. There, on the poop of the vessel,
the Breton said to the Provencal,--
"What are your last commands, my colonel?"
"That no man shall enter the Chalet," cried the father with strong
Modeste Mignon |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Reef by Edith Wharton: own feeling was so clear that but for that scruple she would
have put her hand in his at once. But till she had seen him
again she had never considered the possibility of re-
marriage, and when it suddenly confronted her it seemed, for
the moment, to disorganize the life she had planned for
herself and her child. She had not spoken of this to Darrow
because it appeared to her a subject to be debated within
her own conscience. The question, then, was not as to his
fitness to become the guide and guardian of her child; nor
did she fear that her love for him would deprive Effie of
the least fraction of her tenderness, since she did not
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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 Sophist by Plato: another in the souls of bad men?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: And yet they must all be akin?
THEAETETUS: Of course.
STRANGER: Then we shall be right in calling vice a discord and disease of
the soul?
THEAETETUS: Most true.
STRANGER: And when things having motion, and aiming at an appointed mark,
continually miss their aim and glance aside, shall we say that this is the
effect of symmetry among them, or of the want of symmetry?
THEAETETUS: Clearly of the want of symmetry.
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