| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: have knowledge (phrhonesis), this we were wrong.
MENO: What do you mean by the word 'right'?
SOCRATES: I will explain. If a man knew the way to Larisa, or anywhere
else, and went to the place and led others thither, would he not be a right
and good guide?
MENO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And a person who had a right opinion about the way, but had
never been and did not know, might be a good guide also, might he not?
MENO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And while he has true opinion about that which the other knows,
he will be just as good a guide if he thinks the truth, as he who knows the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: late husband's parents, Monsieur and Madame Lorrain, retail
shopkeepers at Pen-Hoel, a village in the Vendee, situated in that
part of it which is called the Marais. These Lorrains, grandfather and
grandmother of Pierrette Lorrain, sold wood for building purposes,
slates, tiles, pantiles, pipes, etc. Their business, either from their
own incapacity or through ill-luck, did badly, and gave them scarcely
enough to live on. The failure of the well-known firm of Collinet at
Nantes, caused by the events of 1814 which led to a sudden fall in
colonial products, deprived them of twenty-four thousand francs which
they had just deposited with that house.
The arrival of their daughter-in-law was therefore welcome to them.
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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 Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: and virtues of this excellent people; but intending in a short
time to publish a volume by itself, expressly upon that subject,
I refer the reader thither; and, in the mean time, proceed to
relate my own sad catastrophe.
CHAPTER X.
[The author's economy, and happy life, among the Houyhnhnms. His
great improvement in virtue by conversing with them. Their
conversations. The author has notice given him by his master,
that he must depart from the country. He falls into a swoon for
grief; but submits. He contrives and finishes a canoe by the
help of a fellow-servant, and puts to sea at a venture.]
Gulliver's Travels |
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 Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: disposal.
Just at this moment Saillard, having brought the monthly stipend, was
slipping his little speech into the ear of the minister's wife, who
drew herself up and answered with dignity that she did not meddle in
political matters, and besides, she had heard that Monsieur Rabourdin
was already appointed. Saillard, terrified, rushed up to Baudoyer's
office, where he found Dutocq, Godard, and Bixiou in a state of
exasperation difficult to describe; for they were reading the terrible
paper on the administration in which they were all discussed.
Bixiou [with his finger on a paragraph]. "Here YOU are, pere Saillard.
Listen" [reads]:--
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