| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: not be shattered.
But Wilfrid now encountered the wall of brass for which he had been
seeking up and down the earth. He went impetuously to Seraphita,
meaning to express the whole force and bearing of a passion under
which he bounded like the fabled horse beneath the iron horseman, firm
in his saddle, whom nothing moves while the efforts of the fiery
animal only made the rider heavier and more solid. He sought her to
relate his life,--to prove the grandeur of his soul by the grandeur of
his faults, to show the ruins of his desert. But no sooner had he
crossed her threshold, and found himself within the zone of those eyes
of scintillating azure, that met no limits forward and left none
Seraphita |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: you. If, to make a stand against this armament of pigmies, you
collect your best powers, your best friends will cry out that you
want to have everything, that you aim at domineering, at tyranny.
In short, your good points will become your faults, your faults
will be vices, and your virtues crime.
"If you save a man, you will be said to have killed him; if he
reappears on the scene, it will be positive that you have secured
the present at the cost of the future. If he is not dead, he will
die. Stumble, and you fall! Invent anything of any kind and claim
your rights, you will be crotchety, cunning, ill-disposed to
rising younger men.
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