| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: to bear children and bring them up nobly; as the Duchesse de Sully,
the wife of the great Sully, said, a wife is not an instrument of
pleasure, but the honor and virtue of her household."
"You don't know women, my good Mathias," said Paul. "In order to be
happy we must love them as they want to be loved. Isn't there
something brutal in at once depriving a wife of her charms, and
spoiling her beauty before she has begun to enjoy it?"
"If you had had children your wife would not have dissipated your
fortune; she would have stayed at home and looked after them."
"If you were right, dear friend," said Paul, frowning, "I should be
still more unhappy than I am. Do not aggravate my sufferings by
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: When we are old and lean upon them,
Comes a youth with flaunting feathers,
With his flute of reeds, a stranger
Wanders piping through the village,
Beckons to the fairest maiden,
And she follows where he leads her,
Leaving all things for the stranger!"
Pleasant was the journey homeward,
Through interminable forests,
Over meadow, over mountain,
Over river, hill, and hollow.
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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 Silas Marner by George Eliot: Mr. Cass had ended--powerless under the conflict of emotions, all
alike painful. Eppie's heart was swelling at the sense that her
father was in distress; and she was just going to lean down and
speak to him, when one struggling dread at last gained the mastery
over every other in Silas, and he said, faintly--
"Eppie, my child, speak. I won't stand in your way. Thank Mr. and
Mrs. Cass."
Eppie took her hand from her father's head, and came forward a step.
Her cheeks were flushed, but not with shyness this time: the sense
that her father was in doubt and suffering banished that sort of
self-consciousness. She dropped a low curtsy, first to Mrs. Cass
Silas Marner |
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 The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: The Great Presence made a slight movement. "You must be lucid,
please."
"Yes, Sir Ethelred. You know no doubt that most criminals at some
time or other feel an irresistible need of confessing - of making a
clean breast of it to somebody - to anybody. And they do it often
to the police. In that Verloc whom Heat wished so much to screen
I've found a man in that particular psychological state. The man,
figuratively speaking, flung himself on my breast. It was enough
on my part to whisper to him who I was and to add `I know that you
are at the bottom of this affair.' It must have seemed miraculous
to him that we should know already, but he took it all in the
The Secret Agent |
