| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas: During this time, the guards who had seized Cornelius busied
themselves in charitably informing their prisoner of the
usages and customs of Loewestein, which however he knew as
well as they did. The regulations had been read to him at
the moment of his entering the prison, and certain articles
in them remained fixed in his memory.
Among other things they told him that this regulation had
been carried out to its full extent in the case of a
prisoner named Mathias, who in 1668, that is to say, five
years before, had committed a much less violent act of
rebellion than that of which Cornelius was guilty. He had
The Black Tulip |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: tenth - or, say a twentieth; and the next time you burst into print
you will be in a position to share with us the issue of your
calculations.
I imagine you to be one of those persons who talk with cheerfulness
of that place which oxen and wain-ropes could not drag you to
behold. You, who do not even know its situation on the map,
probably denounce sensational descriptions, stretching your limbs
the while in your pleasant parlour on Beretania Street. When I was
pulled ashore there one early morning, there sat with me in the
boat two sisters, bidding farewell (in humble imitation of Damien)
to the lights and joys of human life. One of these wept silently;
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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 Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: the grammar-school, been vaccinated, is exempt from military service,
and possesses all his faculties (I don't mean transcendent ones) can't
amass a capital of forty-five thousand francs in centimes, which
represents a permanent income equal to our salaries, which are, after
all, precarious. In twelve years a grocer can earn enough to give him
ten thousand francs a year; a painter can daub a mile of canvas and be
decorated with the Legion of honor, or pose as a neglected genius. A
literary man becomes professor of something or other, or a journalist
at a hundred francs for a thousand lines; he writes "feuilletons," or
he gets into Saint-Pelagie for a brilliant article that offends the
Jesuits,--which of course is an immense benefit to him and makes him a
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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 Concerning Christian Liberty by Martin Luther: through our Lord Jesus Christ," victory over sin and death, as he
says, "The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the
law" (1 Cor. xv. 56, 57).
>From all this you will again understand why so much importance is
attributed to faith, so that it alone can fulfil the law and
justify without any works. For you see that the First
Commandment, which says, "Thou shalt worship one God only," is
fulfilled by faith alone. If you were nothing but good works from
the soles of your feet to the crown of your head, you would not
be worshipping God, nor fulfilling the First Commandment, since
it is impossible to worship God without ascribing to Him the
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