| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from King Lear by William Shakespeare: Lear. No, Regan, thou shalt never have my curse.
Thy tender-hefted nature shall not give
Thee o'er to harshness. Her eyes are fierce; but thine
Do comfort, and not burn. 'Tis not in thee
To grudge my pleasures, to cut off my train,
To bandy hasty words, to scant my sizes,
And, in conclusion, to oppose the bolt
Against my coming in. Thou better know'st
The offices of nature, bond of childhood,
Effects of courtesy, dues of gratitude.
Thy half o' th' kingdom hast thou not forgot,
King Lear |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: representation of ordinary French life. And the greater part of Greek
literature, beginning with Homer and including the tragedians,
philosophers, and, with the exception of the Comic poets (whose business
was to raise a laugh by whatever means), all the greater writers of Hellas
who have been preserved to us, are free from the taint of indecency.
Some general considerations occur to our mind when we begin to reflect on
this subject. (1) That good and evil are linked together in human nature,
and have often existed side by side in the world and in man to an extent
hardly credible. We cannot distinguish them, and are therefore unable to
part them; as in the parable 'they grow together unto the harvest:' it is
only a rule of external decency by which society can divide them. Nor
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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 Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri: the loss which he has inflicted. It will then be seen that
the fear of having to make strict restitution will be a spur to
the diligence of the well-to-do, in regard to involuntary
offences, whilst for the poor we shall be able to impose work on
behalf of the injured person in place of pecuniary damages.''
Shortly afterwards Garofalo wrote: ``In the opinion of our
school, for many offences, especially slighter offences against
the person, it would be serviceable to substitute for a few days'
imprisonment an effectual indemnification of the injured party.
Reparation of damage might become a genuine penal substitute, when
instead of being, as now, a legal consequence, a right which can
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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 Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: integrity. He owed his plumage as baron to the necessity Napoleon felt
of giving him a title before sending him on missions to foreign
courts.
Bartolomeo had always professed a hatred to the traitors with whom
Napoleon surrounded himself, expecting to bind them to his cause by
dint of victories. It was he of whom it is told that he made three
steps to the door of the Emperor's cabinet after advising him to get
rid of three men in France on the eve of Napoleon's departure for his
celebrated and admirable campaign of 1814. After the second return of
the Bourbons Bartolomeo ceased to wear the decoration of the Legion of
honor. No man offered a finer image of those old Republicans,
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