| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: satisfied with himself for restraining his desires because he saw that
it would lead to his greater contentment. He returned to his room
without accident.
Ten days went by without any event occurring to trouble the peace and
solitude of the house. Montefiore employed his Italian cajolery on old
Perez, on Dona Lagounia, on the apprentice, even on the cook, and they
all liked him; but, in spite of the confidence he now inspired in
them, he never asked to see Juana, or to have the door of her
mysterious hiding-place opened to him. The young girl, hungry to see
her lover, implored him to do so; but he always refused her from an
instinct of prudence. Besides, he had used his best powers and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson: involved; until at last I heard her declare, with a great deal of
passion, that she would take that answer from the hands of none, and I
must down upon my knees for pardon.
The causelessness of all this fuff stirred my own bile. "I have said
nothing you can properly object to," said I, "and as for my knees, that
is an attitude I keep for God."
"And as a goddess I am to be served!" she cried, shaking her brown
locks at me and with a bright colour. "Every man that comes within
waft of my petticoats shall use me so!"
"I will go so far as ask your pardon for the fashion's sake, although I
vow I know not why," I replied. "But for these play-acting postures,
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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 Timaeus by Plato: one only-begotten and created heaven.
Now that which is created is of necessity corporeal, and also visible and
tangible. And nothing is visible where there is no fire, or tangible which
has no solidity, and nothing is solid without earth. Wherefore also God in
the beginning of creation made the body of the universe to consist of fire
and earth. But two things cannot be rightly put together without a third;
there must be some bond of union between them. And the fairest bond is
that which makes the most complete fusion of itself and the things which it
combines; and proportion is best adapted to effect such a union. For
whenever in any three numbers, whether cube or square, there is a mean,
which is to the last term what the first term is to it; and again, when the
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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 Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: clearness.
To do so, it will be necessary roughly to compare the two
sets of conventions upon which plays and romances are
respectively based. The purposes of these two arts are so
much alike, and they deal so much with the same passions and
interests, that we are apt to forget the fundamental
opposition of their methods. And yet such a fundamental
opposition exists. In the drama the action is developed in
great measure by means of things that remain outside of the
art; by means of real things, that is, and not artistic
conventions for things. This is a sort of realism that is
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