| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson:
Treasure Island |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: To describe the separate progress of the work in the case of each
of the six Epeirae mentioned would be a useless repetition: all
six employ the same methods and weave similar webs, save for
certain details that shall be set forth later. I will, therefore,
sum up in the aggregate the particulars supplied by one or other of
them.
My subjects, in the first instance, are young and boast but a
slight corporation, very far removed from what it will be in the
late autumn. The belly, the wallet containing the rope-works,
hardly exceeds a peppercorn in bulk. This slenderness on the part
of the spinstresses must not prejudice us against their work:
The Life of the Spider |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: Church, and several other important works that were precious to a
priest.
Birotteau, more and more surprised by the successive improvements of
the gallery, once so bare, came by degrees to a condition of
involuntary envy. He wished he could possess that apartment, so
thoroughly in keeping with the gravity of ecclestiastical life. The
passion increased from day to day. Working, sometimes for days
together, in this retreat, the vicar could appreciate the silence and
the peace that reigned there. During the following year the Abbe
Chapeloud turned a small room into an oratory, which his pious friends
took pleasure in beautifying. Still later, another lady gave the canon
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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 Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: The Princess thought that, of all sublunary things, knowledge was
the best. She desired first to learn all sciences, and then
proposed to found a college of learned women, in which she would
preside, that, by conversing with the old and educating the young,
she might divide her time between the acquisition and communication
of wisdom, and raise up for the next age models of prudence and
patterns of piety.
The Prince desired a little kingdom in which he might administer
justice in his own person and see all the parts of government with
his own eyes; but he could never fix the limits of his dominion,
and was always adding to the number of his subjects.
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