| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: all the dangers and the lands they traversed to reach the Promised
Land engendered their exclusive race-feeling and their hatred of all
other nations.
"These three Scriptures are the archives of an engulfed world. Therein
lies the secret of the extraordinary splendor of those languages and
their myths. A grand human history lies beneath those names of men and
places, and those fables which charm us so irresistibly, we know not
why. Perhaps it is because we find in them the native air of renewed
humanity."
Thus, to him, this threefold literature included all the thoughts of
man. Not a book could be written, in his opinion, of which the subject
Louis Lambert |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: Little Bilham, in meditation, looked at him with a kindness almost
paternal. "Don't you like it over here?"
Strether laughed out--for the tone was indeed droll; he let
himself go. "What has that to do with it? The only thing I've any
business to like is to feel that I'm moving him. That's why I ask
you whether you believe I AM? Is the creature"--and he did his
best to show that he simply wished to ascertain--"honest?"
His companion looked responsible, but looked it through a small
dim smile. "What creature do you mean?"
It was on this that they did have for a little a mute interchange.
"Is it untrue that he's free? How then," Strether asked wondering
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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 Euthyphro by Plato: therefore I suppose that people think me wrong. But, as you who are
well informed about them approve of them, I cannot do better than
assent to your superior wisdom. What else can I say, confessing as I
do, that I know nothing about them? Tell me, for the love of Zeus,
whether you really believe that they are true.
EUTHYPHRO: Yes, Socrates; and things more wonderful still, of which the
world is in ignorance.
SOCRATES: And do you really believe that the gods fought with one
another, and had dire quarrels, battles, and the like, as the poets
say, and as you may see represented in the works of great artists? The
temples are full of them; and notably the robe of Athene, which is
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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 Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: and men of this class were contemptuously called "poor white trash."
Hence I supposed that, since the non-slave-holders at the South were ignorant,
poor, and degraded as a class, the non-slave-holders at the North must be
in a similar condition. I could have landed in no part of the United States
where I should have found a more striking and gratifying contrast,
not only to life generally in the South, but in the condition of the colored
people there, than in New Bedford. I was amazed when Mr. Johnson told me
that there was nothing in the laws or constitution of Massachusetts
that would prevent a colored man from being governor of the State,
if the people should see fit to elect him. There, too, the black man's
children attended the public schools with the white man's children,
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