| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Confessio Amantis by John Gower: What thing it is he wolde mene:
And in this wise abod the queene,
And passeth over thilke nyht,
Til it was on the morwe liht.
Sche sende for him, and he com,
With him his Astellabre he nom, 1890
Which was of fin gold precious
With pointz and cercles merveilous;
And ek the hevenely figures
Wroght in a bok ful of peintures
He tok this ladi forto schewe,
Confessio Amantis |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic: come to pick out a piano for the Methodist parsonage?
And how could he decorously prefer the request to her to
undertake this task? He might not meet her again for ages,
and to his provincial notions writing would have seemed
out of the question. And would it not be disagreeable to
have her know that he was buying a piano by part payments?
Poor Alice's dread of the washerwoman's gossip occurred
to him, at this, and he smiled in spite of himself.
Then all at once the difficulty vanished. Of course it
would come all right somehow. Everything did.
He was on firmer ground, buying the materials for the new book,
The Damnation of Theron Ware |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: received in significant silence. Potel and Renard each took an arm of
their friend, and walked about with him, conversing. Presently
Philippe was seen approaching in full dress; he trailed his cane after
him with an imperturbable air which contrasted with the forced
attention Max was paying to the remarks of his two supporters.
Bridau's hand was grasped by Mignonnet, Carpentier, and several
others. This welcome, so different from that accorded to Max,
dispelled the last feeling of cowardice, or, if you prefer it, wisdom,
which Flore's entreaties, and above all, her tendernesses, had
awakened in the latter's mind.
"We shall fight," he said to Renard, "and to the death. Therefore
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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 Menexenus by Plato: Socrates, who does not recover after having heard one of them for three
days and more, is truly Platonic.
Such discourses, if we may form a judgment from the three which are extant
(for the so-called Funeral Oration of Demosthenes is a bad and spurious
imitation of Thucydides and Lysias), conformed to a regular type. They
began with Gods and ancestors, and the legendary history of Athens, to
which succeeded an almost equally fictitious account of later times. The
Persian war usually formed the centre of the narrative; in the age of
Isocrates and Demosthenes the Athenians were still living on the glories of
Marathon and Salamis. The Menexenus veils in panegyric the weak places of
Athenian history. The war of Athens and Boeotia is a war of liberation;
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