| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: therefor they suffer less. Felix might still rank among the handsomest
and most agreeable men in Paris. He was originally commended to many
women by one of the noblest creatures of our epoch, Madame de
Mortsauf, who had died, it was said, out of love and grief for him;
but he was specially trained for social life by the handsome and well-
known Lady Dudley.
In the eyes of many Parisian women, Felix, a sort of hero of romance,
owed much of his success to the evil that was said of him. Madame de
Manerville had closed the list of his amorous adventures; and perhaps
her dismissal had something to do with his frame of mind. At any rate,
without being in any way a Don Juan, he had gathered in the world of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: to feel this themselves, and, as if overpowered by their own
grandeur, hurriedly sat down on the high backed chairs behind the
table with the green cloth, on which were a triangular article
with an eagle at the top, two glass vases--something like those
in which sweetmeats are kept in refreshment rooms--an inkstand,
pens, clean paper, and good, newly-cut pencils of different
kinds.
The public prosecutor came in with the judges. With his portfolio
under one arm, and swinging the other, he hurriedly walked to his
seat near the window, and was instantly absorbed in reading and
looking through the papers, not wasting a single moment, in hope
Resurrection |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: was avowedly flying: the question was whether she had
fled because his importunities displeased her, or
because she did not wholly trust herself to resist them;
unless, indeed, all her talk of flight had been a blind,
and her departure no more than a manoeuvre.
Archer did not really believe this. Little as he had
actually seen of Madame Olenska, he was beginning to
think that he could read her face, and if not her face,
her voice; and both had betrayed annoyance, and even
dismay, at Beaufort's sudden appearance. But, after all,
if this were the case, was it not worse than if she had
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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 Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche: artful, obstinate and enduring: that is at present the noblest type.
The peasant is at present the best; and the peasant type should be master!
But it is the kingdom of the populace--I no longer allow anything to be
imposed upon me. The populace, however--that meaneth, hodgepodge.
Populace-hodgepodge: therein is everything mixed with everything, saint
and swindler, gentleman and Jew, and every beast out of Noah's ark.
Good manners! Everything is false and foul with us. No one knoweth any
longer how to reverence: it is THAT precisely that we run away from. They
are fulsome obtrusive dogs; they gild palm-leaves.
This loathing choketh me, that we kings ourselves have become false, draped
and disguised with the old faded pomp of our ancestors, show-pieces for the
Thus Spake Zarathustra |
