| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: "What quotation?"
"You know: 'He who is not with me is against me.'"
"Wellwhat about it?"
Jesse was puzzled but not alarmed.
"Well, you say herelet me see." Burne opened the paper and read:
"'He who is not with me is against me, as that gentleman said who
was notoriously capable of only coarse distinctions and puerile
generalities.'"
"What of it?" Ferrenby began to look alarmed. "Oliver Cromwell
said it, didn't he? or was it Washington, or one of the saints?
Good Lord, I've forgotten."
This Side of Paradise |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: at last we arrive at the perfect vision of beauty, not relative or
changing, but eternal and absolute; not bounded by this world, or in or out
of this world, but an aspect of the divine, extending over all things, and
having no limit of space or time: this is the highest knowledge of which
the human mind is capable. Plato does not go on to ask whether the
individual is absorbed in the sea of light and beauty or retains his
personality. Enough for him to have attained the true beauty or good,
without enquiring precisely into the relation in which human beings stood
to it. That the soul has such a reach of thought, and is capable of
partaking of the eternal nature, seems to imply that she too is eternal
(compare Phaedrus). But Plato does not distinguish the eternal in man from
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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 Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: I must now think only of reparation."
The firm voice of the poor man and his whole manner surprised Cesarine
and the priest. Yet nothing could be more natural. All men can better
bear a known and definite misfortune than the cruel uncertainties of a
fate which, from one moment to another, brings excessive hope or
crushing sorrow.
"I have dreamed a dream for twenty-two years; to-day I awake with my
cudgel in my hand," said Cesar, his mind turning back to the
Tourangian peasant days.
Pillerault pressed his nephew in his arms as he heard the words.
Birotteau saw that his wife, Anselme, and Celestin were present. The
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
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 Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas: without looking at Monsieur his brother, and led the young
princess to the door of her apartments. It was remarked that
at the threshold of the door, his majesty, freed from every
restraint, or not equal to the situation, sighed very
deeply. The ladies present -- for nothing escapes a woman's
glance -- Mademoiselle Montalais, for instance -- did not
fail to say to each other, "the king sighed," and "Madame
sighed too." This had been indeed the case. Madame had
sighed very noiselessly, but with an accompaniment very far
more dangerous for the king's repose. Madame had sighed,
first closing her beautiful black eyes, next opening them,
Ten Years Later |
