| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: exultation.
"Let us go by way of your tailor's, dear boy, and tell him to be quick
with your clothes, or try them on if they are ready. If you are going
to your fine ladies' houses, you shall eclipse that monster of a de
Marsay and young Rastignac and any Ajuda-Pinto or Maxime de Trailles
or Vandenesse of them all. Remember that your mistress is Coralie! But
you will not play me any tricks, eh?"
Two days afterwards, on the eve of the supper-party at Coralie's
house, there was a new play at the Ambigu, and it fell to Lucien to
write the dramatic criticism. Lucien and Coralie walked together after
dinner from the Rue de Vendome to the Panorama-Dramatique, going along
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: well as we can. No better image of nature or truth, as an organic whole,
can be conceived than this. So far is Plato from supposing that mere
division and subdivision of general notions will guide men into all truth.
Plato does not really mean to say that the Sophist or the Statesman can be
caught in this way. But these divisions and subdivisions were favourite
logical exercises of the age in which he lived; and while indulging his
dialectical fancy, and making a contribution to logical method, he delights
also to transfix the Eristic Sophist with weapons borrowed from his own
armoury. As we have already seen, the division gives him the opportunity
of making the most damaging reflections on the Sophist and all his kith and
kin, and to exhibit him in the most discreditable light.
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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 Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: experience when awake, ought not in the slightest degree to be called in
question on account of the illusions of our dreams. For if it happened
that an individual, even when asleep, had some very distinct idea, as, for
example, if a geometer should discover some new demonstration, the
circumstance of his being asleep would not militate against its truth; and
as for the most ordinary error of our dreams, which consists in their
representing to us various objects in the same way as our external senses,
this is not prejudicial, since it leads us very properly to suspect the
truth of the ideas of sense; for we are not infrequently deceived in the
same manner when awake; as when persons in the jaundice see all objects
yellow, or when the stars or bodies at a great distance appear to us much
Reason Discourse |
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 Barlaam and Ioasaph by St. John of Damascus: bad, shall be overlooked, but that there is reserved a requital
for words, deeds and thoughts, is plain. The Lord saith,
'Whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a
cup of cold water only, in the name of a disciple, he shall in no
wise lose his reward.' And again he saith, `When the Son of man
shall come in his glory, and all the holy Angels with him, then
before him shall be gathered all nations, and he shall separate
them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the
goats. And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the
goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his
right hand, `Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom
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