| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: how he had yielded to the forces of religion in his household,
disappointed as he was in his hopes of a husband, and wounded in the
tenderest fibres of paternity,--the love of a father for his
daughters. Such griefs were singularly moving to the hearts of the two
young girls, who were themselves deprived of all tenderness.
Sometimes, when pacing the garden between his daughters, with an arm
round each little waist, and stepping with their own short steps, the
father would stop short behind a clump of trees, out of sight of the
house, and kiss them on their foreheads; his eyes, his lips, his whole
countenance expressing the deepest commiseration.
"You are not very happy, my dear little girls," he said one day; "but
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: Or, say, doth he, so soon as ever the clouds
Have come thereunder, then into the same
Descend in person, that from thence he may
Near-by decide upon the stroke of shaft?
And, lastly, why, with devastating bolt
Shakes he asunder holy shrines of gods
And his own thrones of splendour, and to-breaks
The well-wrought idols of divinities,
And robs of glory his own images
By wound of violence?
But to return apace,
Of The Nature of Things |
| 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: remarks that the controversial nature of morals and religion arises out of
the difficulty of verifying them. There is no measure or standard to which
they can be referred.
The next definition, 'Piety is that which is loved of the gods,' is
shipwrecked on a refined distinction between the state and the act,
corresponding respectively to the adjective (philon) and the participle
(philoumenon), or rather perhaps to the participle and the verb
(philoumenon and phileitai). The act is prior to the state (as in
Aristotle the energeia precedes the dunamis); and the state of being loved
is preceded by the act of being loved. But piety or holiness is preceded
by the act of being pious, not by the act of being loved; and therefore
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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 The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: through the window smelled of the sea. Had Isabel the same crowd with her
this week-end, wondered William?
And he remembered the holidays they used to have, the four of them, with a
little farm girl, Rose, to look after the babies. Isabel wore a jersey and
her hair in a plait; she looked about fourteen. Lord! how his nose used to
peel! And the amount they ate, and the amount they slept in that immense
feather bed with their feet locked together...William couldn't help a grim
smile as he thought of Isabel's horror if she knew the full extent of his
sentimentality.
...
"Hillo, William!" She was at the station after all, standing just as he
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