| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Summer by Edith Wharton: DEAR CHARITY:
I have your letter, and it touches me more than I can
say. Won't you trust me, in return, to do my best?
There are things it is hard to explain, much less to
justify; but your generosity makes everything easier.
All I can do now is to thank you from my soul for
understanding. Your telling me that you wanted me to
do right has helped me beyond expression. If ever
there is a hope of realizing what we dreamed of you
will see me back on the instant; and I haven't yet lost
that hope.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: of doing good, the quietist under that of resignation, the enthusiast under
that of faith or love. The upright man of the world will desire above all
things that morality should be plain and fixed, and should use language in
its ordinary sense. Persons of an imaginative temperament will generally
be dissatisfied with the words 'utility' or 'pleasure': their principle of
right is of a far higher character--what or where to be found they cannot
always distinctly tell;--deduced from the laws of human nature, says one;
resting on the will of God, says another; based upon some transcendental
idea which animates more worlds than one, says a third:
on nomoi prokeintai upsipodes, ouranian
di aithera teknothentes.
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from 1984 by George Orwell: coin, looked something like a cent.'
'Where was St Martin's?' said Winston.
'St Martin's? That's still standing. It's in Victory Square, alongside the
picture gallery. A building with a kind of a triangular porch and pillars
in front, and a big flight of steps.'
Winston knew the place well. It was a museum used for propaganda displays
of various kinds--scale models of rocket bombs and Floating Fortresses,
waxwork tableaux illustrating enemy atrocities, and the like.
'St Martin's-in-the-Fields it used to be called,' supplemented the old man,
'though I don't recollect any fields anywhere in those parts.'
Winston did not buy the picture. It would have been an even more
1984 |
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 The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas: affairs, reached the house of his godson, Cornelius van
Baerle, one evening in the month of January, 1672.
De Witt, although being very little of a horticulturist or
of an artist, went over the whole mansion, from the studio
to the green-house, inspecting everything, from the pictures
down to the tulips. He thanked his godson for having joined
him on the deck of the admiral's ship "The Seven Provinces,"
during the battle of Southwold Bay, and for having given his
name to a magnificent tulip; and whilst he thus, with the
kindness and affability of a father to a son, visited Van
Baerle's treasures, the crowd gathered with curiosity, and
The Black Tulip |
