| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: or, if you take the other view, condemns the sentence as
unwise and inhumane. We are not then of the 'same mind that
was in Christ.' We disagree with Christ. Either Christ
meant nothing, or else he or we must be in the wrong. Well
says Thoreau, speaking of some texts from the New Testament,
and finding a strange echo of another style which the reader
may recognise: 'Let but one of these sentences be rightly
read from any pulpit in the land, and there would not be left
one stone of that meeting-house upon another.'
It may be objected that these are what are called 'hard
sayings'; and that a man, or an education, may be very
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: --Rodolphe made many signs of denial.--"Yes," said the bookseller's
wife, going on without noticing this pantomime, which, however, she
plainly saw. "I have detected that, and naturally I have reconsidered
my conduct. Well! I will put an end to everything by a few words of
deep truth. Understand this, Rodolphe: I feel in myself the strength
to stifle a feeling if it were not in harmony with my ideas or
anticipation of what true love is. I could love--as we can love in
Italy, but I know my duty. No intoxication can make me forget it.
Married without my consent to that poor old man, I might take
advantage of the liberty he so generously gives me; but three years of
married life imply acceptance of its laws. Hence the most vehement
Albert Savarus |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Aeneid by Virgil: With which he drives the clouds and clears the skies,
First gave a holy kiss; then thus replies:
"Daughter, dismiss thy fears; to thy desire
The fates of thine are fix'd, and stand entire.
Thou shalt behold thy wish'd Lavinian walls;
And, ripe for heav'n, when fate Aeneas calls,
Then shalt thou bear him up, sublime, to me:
No councils have revers'd my firm decree.
And, lest new fears disturb thy happy state,
Know, I have search'd the mystic rolls of Fate:
Thy son (nor is th' appointed season far)
Aeneid |
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 Message by Honore de Balzac: expectations."
About a league out of Pouilly the coach was overturned. My
luckless comrade, thinking to save himself, jumped to the edge of
a newly-ploughed field, instead of following the fortunes of the
vehicle and clinging tightly to the roof, as I did. He either
miscalculated in some way, or he slipped; how it happened, I do
not know, but the coach fell over upon him, and he was crushed
under it.
We carried him into a peasant's cottage, and there, amid the
moans wrung from him by horrible sufferings, he contrived to give
me a commission--a sacred task, in that it was laid upon me by a
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