| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: Incredible mingling of two creations! sometimes he rose to God in
prayer; sometimes he descended, humble and resigned, to the quiet
happiness of animals. To him the stars were the flowers of night, the
birds his friends, the sun was a father. Everywhere he found the soul
of his mother; often he saw her in the clouds; he spoke to her; they
communicated, veritably, by celestial visions; on certain days he
could hear her voice and see her smile; in short, there were days when
he had not lost her. God seemed to have given him the power of the
hermits of old, to have endowed him with some perfected inner senses
which penetrated to the spirit of all things. Unknown moral forces
enabled him to go farther than other men into the secrets of the
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: broad piece of ground planted with trees, and it joins the
fortifications of the town. About ten rods below the walls and rocks
which support this Promenade (due to a happy combination of
indestructible slate and patient industry) another circular road
exists, called the "Queen's Staircase"; this is cut in the rock itself
and leads to a bridge built across the Nancon by Anne of Brittany.
Below this road, which forms a third cornice, gardens descend, terrace
after terrace, to the river, like shelves covered with flowers.
Parallel with the Promenade, on the other side of the Nancon and
across its narrow valley, high rock-formations, called the heights of
Saint-Sulpice, follow the stream and descend in gentle slopes to the
The Chouans |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce: grotesque and horrible, their forms gigantic.
Suddenly he heard a sharp report and something struck the
water smartly within a few inches of his head, spattering his
face with spray. He heard a second report, and saw one of
the sentinels with his rifle at his shoulder, a light cloud
of blue smoke rising from the muzzle. The man in the water
saw the eye of the man on the bridge gazing into his own
through the sights of the rifle. He observed that it was a
gray eye and remembered having read that gray eyes were
keenest, and that all famous marksmen had them.
Nevertheless, this one had missed.
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
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 Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: formulated, in his sixteenth year, such a psychological dictum as
this:--"The events which bear witness to the action of the human race,
and are the outcome of its intellect, have causes by which they are
preconceived, as our actions are accomplished in our minds before they
are reproduced by the outer man; presentiments or predictions are the
perception of these causes"--I think we may deplore in him a genius
equal to Pascal, Lavoisier, or Laplace. His chimerical notions about
angels perhaps overruled his work too long; but was it not in trying
to make gold that the alchemists unconsciously created chemistry? At
the same time, Lambert, at a later period, studied comparative
anatomy, physics, geometry, and other sciences bearing on his
Louis Lambert |
