| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: "This is my excellent friend Mr. Newman," he said very blandly.
"You must know him."
"I am delighted to know Mr. Newman," said the marquis with a low bow,
but without offering his hand.
"He is the old woman at second-hand," Newman said to himself,
as he returned M. de Bellegarde's greeting. And this was
the starting-point of a speculative theory, in his mind,
that the late marquis had been a very amiable foreigner, with an
inclination to take life easily and a sense that it was difficult
for the husband of the stilted little lady by the fire to do so.
But if he had taken little comfort in his wife he had taken
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Agesilaus by Xenophon: or sanguinary measures he so disposed them by his healing presence
that civil concord and material prosperity were permanently
maintained. Therefore it was that the Hellenes in Asia deplored his
departure,[17] as though they had lost, not simply a ruler, but a
father or bosom friend, and in the end they showed that their
friendship was of no fictitious character. At any rate, they
voluntarily helped him to succour Lacedaemon, though it involved, as
they knew, the need of doing battle with combatants of equal prowess
with themselves. So the tale of his achievements in Asia has an end.
[17] See Plut. "Ages." xv.
II
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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 Parmenides by Plato: incapable of rest. Neither is one the same with itself or any other, or
other than itself or any other. For if other than itself, then other than
one, and therefore not one; and, if the same with other, it would be other,
and other than one. Neither can one while remaining one be other than
other; for other, and not one, is the other than other. But if not other
by virtue of being one, not by virtue of itself; and if not by virtue of
itself, not itself other, and if not itself other, not other than anything.
Neither will one be the same with itself. For the nature of the same is
not that of the one, but a thing which becomes the same with anything does
not become one; for example, that which becomes the same with the many
becomes many and not one. And therefore if the one is the same with
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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 Silas Marner by George Eliot: joy, for its meagre image was only a fresh reminder of his loss; and
hope was too heavily crushed by the sudden blow for his imagination
to dwell on the growth of a new hoard from that small beginning.
He filled up the blank with grief. As he sat weaving, he every now
and then moaned low, like one in pain: it was the sign that his
thoughts had come round again to the sudden chasm--to the empty
evening-time. And all the evening, as he sat in his loneliness by
his dull fire, he leaned his elbows on his knees, and clasped his
head with his hands, and moaned very low--not as one who seeks to
be heard.
And yet he was not utterly forsaken in his trouble. The repulsion
Silas Marner |
