| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: ancient in the town and had formerly been respectable. It was a still
better reason for awarding him a species of familiar reverence that
Uncle Venner was himself the most ancient existence, whether of man
or thing, in Pyncheon Street, except the House of the Seven Gables,
and perhaps the elm that overshadowed it.
This patriarch now presented himself before Hepzibah, clad in an
old blue coat, which had a fashionable air, and must have accrued
to him from the cast-off wardrobe of some dashing clerk. As for
his trousers, they were of tow-cloth, very short in the legs,
and bagging down strangely in the rear, but yet having a suitableness
to his figure which his other garment entirely lacked. His hat had
House of Seven Gables |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: their addresses to him. Wherefore I say to you, Agathon, 'Be not deceived
by him; learn from me and take warning, and do not be a fool and learn by
experience, as the proverb says.'
When Alcibiades had finished, there was a laugh at his outspokenness; for
he seemed to be still in love with Socrates. You are sober, Alcibiades,
said Socrates, or you would never have gone so far about to hide the
purpose of your satyr's praises, for all this long story is only an
ingenious circumlocution, of which the point comes in by the way at the
end; you want to get up a quarrel between me and Agathon, and your notion
is that I ought to love you and nobody else, and that you and you only
ought to love Agathon. But the plot of this Satyric or Silenic drama has
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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 Concerning Christian Liberty by Martin Luther: nor does he ever appear in the presence of God, because God does
not hear sinners.
Who then can comprehend the loftiness of that Christian dignity
which, by its royal power, rules over all things, even over
death, life, and sin, and, by its priestly glory, is all-powerful
with God, since God does what He Himself seeks and wishes, as it
is written, "He will fulfil the desire of them that fear Him; He
also will hear their cry, and will save them"? (Psalm cxlv. 19).
This glory certainly cannot be attained by any works, but by
faith only.
>From these considerations any one may clearly see how a Christian
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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 Reef by Edith Wharton: the confused richness of a summer landscape. He no longer
understood the violent impulses and dreamy pauses of his own
young heart, or the inscrutable abandonments and reluctances
of hers. He had known a moment of anguish at losing her--the
mad plunge of youthful instincts against the barrier of
fate; but the first wave of stronger sensation had swept
away all but the outline of their story, and the memory of
Anna Summers had made the image of the young girl sacred,
but the class uninteresting.
Such generalisations belonged, however, to an earlier stage
of his experience. The more he saw of life the more
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