| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: who is a relation and one who is not a relation; for surely the pollution
is the same in either case, if you knowingly associate with the murderer
when you ought to clear yourself and him by proceeding against him. The
real question is whether the murdered man has been justly slain. If
justly, then your duty is to let the matter alone; but if unjustly, then
even if the murderer lives under the same roof with you and eats at the
same table, proceed against him. Now the man who is dead was a poor
dependant of mine who worked for us as a field labourer on our farm in
Naxos, and one day in a fit of drunken passion he got into a quarrel with
one of our domestic servants and slew him. My father bound him hand and
foot and threw him into a ditch, and then sent to Athens to ask of a
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pericles by William Shakespeare: DIONYZA.
O, 'tis too true.
CLEON.
But see what heaven can do! By this our change,
These mouths, who but of late, earth, sea, and air,
Were all too little to content and please,
Although they gave their creatures in abundance,
As houses are defiled for want of use,
They are now starved for want of exercise:
Those palates who, not yet two sumMers younger,
Must have inventions to delight the taste,
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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 Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: The last edition of the works of Canalis, printed on vellum, royal
8vo, from the press of Didot, with illustrations by Bixiou, Joseph
Bridau, Schinner, Sommervieux, etc., is in five volumes, price,
nine francs post-paid.
This letter fell like a cobble-stone on a tulip. A poet, secretary of
claims, getting a stipend in a public office, drawing an annuity,
seeking a decoration, adored by the women of the faubourg Saint-
Germain--was that the muddy minstrel lingering along the quays, sad,
dreamy, worn with toil, and re-entering his garret fraught with
poetry? However, Modeste perceived the irony of the envious
bookseller, who dared to say, "I invented Canalis; I made Nathan!"
Modeste Mignon |
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 Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: Among the different possibilities as to the person's
individuality there did not for a moment occur to
Yeobright that it might be one of his own family.
Sometimes furze-cutters had been known to sleep
out of doors at these times, to save a long journey
homeward and back again; but Clym remembered the moan
and looked closer, and saw that the form was feminine;
and a distress came over him like cold air from a cave.
But he was not absolutely certain that the woman was his mother
till he stooped and beheld her face, pallid, and with closed eyes.
His breath went, as it were, out of his body and the cry
Return of the Native |
