| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: own house. When the door closed on her, the young lover, having lost
his hopes, and worse, far worse, his dearest beliefs, walked through
the streets like a drunken man, and presently found himself in his own
room without knowing how he came there. He flung himself into an arm-
chair, put his head in his hands and his feet on the andirons, drying
his boots until he burned them. It was an awful moment,--one of those
moments in human life when the character is moulded, and the future
conduct of the best of men depends on the good or evil fortune of his
first action. Providence or fatality?--choose which you will.
This young man belonged to a good family, whose nobility was not very
ancient; but there are so few really old families in these days, that
Ferragus |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: because, he had spent all he had, had attained by some special
influence the post of guardian to a rich old man who was
squandering his property--and was now evidently living by this
guardianship.
"How am I to get rid of him without offending him?" thought
Nekhludoff, looking at this full, shiny face with the stiffened
moustache and listening to his friendly, good-humoured chatter
about where one gets fed best, and his bragging about his doings
as a guardian.
"Well, then, where do we dine?"
"Really, I have no time to spare," said Nekhludoff, glancing at
Resurrection |
| 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: [7] Or, "a mere empiric in the art of husbandry."
Thank you (I said), Ischomachus, my courage needs no further fanning
upon that score. I am bold enough now to believe that no one need
abstain from agriculture for fear he will not recognise the nature of
the soil. Indeed, I now recall to mind a fact concerning fishermen,
how as they ply their business on the seas, not crawling lazily along,
nor bringing to, for prospect's sake, but in the act of scudding past
the flying farmsteads,[8] these brave mariners have only to set eyes
upon crops on land, and they will boldly pronounce opinion on the
nature of the soil itself, whether good or bad: this they blame and
that they praise. And these opinions for the most part coincide, I
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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 Dreams by Olive Schreiner: And the angel said, "What is it?"
He answered, "It is I! it is myself!" And he went forward as if he would
have lain his heart against it; but the angel held him back and covered his
eyes.
Now God had given power to the angel further to unclothe that soul, to take
from it all those outward attributes of time and place and circumstance
whereby the individual life is marked off from the life of the whole.
Again the angel uncovered the man's eyes, and he looked. He saw before him
that which in its tiny drop reflects the whole universe; he saw that which
marks within itself the step of the furthest star, and tells how the
crystal grows under ground where no eye has seen it; that which is where
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