| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Economist by Xenophon: father and I made worth I do not know how many times more than its
original value. And then, Socrates, this valuable invention[36] is so
easy to learn that you who have but heard it know and understand it as
well as I myself do, and can go away and teach it to another if you
choose. Yet my father did not learn it of another, nor did he discover
it by a painful mental process;[37] but, as he has often told me,
through pure love of husbandry and fondness of toil, he would become
enamoured of such a spot as I describe,[38] and then nothing would
content him but he must own it, in order to have something to do, and
at the same time, to derive pleasure along with profit from the
purchase. For you must know, Socrates, of all Athenians I have ever
|
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 Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: position partly by a fortunate marriage, partly by the slow persistent
thrift characteristic of provincial life; for in the provinces people
pride themselves on accumulating rather than on spending, and all the
ambition in a man's nature is either extinguished or directed to
money-getting, for want of any nobler end. So he had grown rich at
last, and thought to transmit to his only son all the cut-and-dried
experience which he himself had purchased at the price of his lost
illusions; a noble last illusion of age which fondly seeks to bequeath
its virtues and its wary prudence to heedless youth, intent only on
the enjoyment of the enchanted life that lies before it.
"This foresight on my father's part led him to make plans for my
|
