| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: which when any man had overleaped, the whole problem of the universe was
from that moment inverted. With Plotinus and his school man is seeking
for God: with Clement and his, God is seeking for man. With the
former, God is passive, and man active: with the latter, God is active,
man is passive--passive, that is, in so far as his business is to listen
when he is spoken to, to look at the light which is unveiled to him, to
submit himself to the inward laws which he feels reproving and checking
him at every turn, as Socrates was reproved and checked by his inward
Daemon.
Whether of these two theorems gives the higher conception either of the
Divine Being, or of man, I leave it for you to judge. To those old
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: gold all about me. My thoughts were full of the lovely Countess; I
confess, to my shame, that the vision completely eclipsed another
quiet, innocent figure, the figure of the woman who had entered upon a
life of toil and obscurity; but on the morrow, through the clouds of
slumber, Fanny's sweet face rose before me in all its beauty, and I
thought of nothing else."
"Will you take a glass of eau sucree?" asked the Vicomtesse,
interrupting Derville.
"I should be glad of it."
"But I can see nothing in this that can touch our concerns," said Mme.
de Grandlieu, as she rang the bell.
Gobseck |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Anthem by Ayn Rand: their forehead and moved it as we had.
Thus, each day, we greet Liberty 5-3000,
and they answer, and no men can suspect.
We do not wonder at this new sin of ours.
It is our second Transgression of Preference,
for we do not think of all our brothers,
as we must, but only of one, and their name
is Liberty 5-3000. We do not know why
we think of them. We do not know why,
when we think of them, we feel all of
a sudden that the earth is good and
Anthem |
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 Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: adopted English; an odd circumstance, if you reflect that both must
be largely Norsemen by descent. I remember seeing one of the
strongest instances of this division: a thing like a Punch-and-
Judy box erected on the flat grave-stones of the churchyard; from
the hutch or proscenium - I know not what to call it - an eldritch-
looking preacher laying down the law in Gaelic about some one of
the name of POWL, whom I at last divined to be the apostle to the
Gentiles; a large congregation of the Lews men very devoutly
listening; and on the outskirts of the crowd, some of the town's
children (to whom the whole affair was Greek and Hebrew) profanely
playing tigg. The same descent, the same country, the same narrow
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