| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: said: Stranger of Thurii--if politeness would allow me I should say, A
plague upon you! What can make you tell such a lie about me and the
others, which I hardly like to repeat, as that I wish Cleinias to perish?
Euthydemus replied: And do you think, Ctesippus, that it is possible to
tell a lie?
Yes, said Ctesippus; I should be mad to say anything else.
And in telling a lie, do you tell the thing of which you speak or not?
You tell the thing of which you speak.
And he who tells, tells that thing which he tells, and no other?
Yes, said Ctesippus.
And that is a distinct thing apart from other things?
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: been told at once if there had been any wind. Calm, I thought,
and I was doubly vexed. Indeed, I felt dual more than ever.
The steward reappeared suddenly in the doorway.
I jumped up from the couch so quickly that he gave a start.
"What do you want here?"
"Close your port, sir--they are washing decks."
"It is closed," I said, reddening.
"Very well, sir." But he did not move from the doorway and returned
my stare in an extraordinary, equivocal manner for a time.
Then his eyes wavered, all his expression changed, and in a voice
unusually gentle, almost coaxingly:
The Secret Sharer |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: Gaudissart had scarcely finished his dinner before Madame Fontanieu
and the assistant-mayor of Vouvray came to the Soleil d'Or and took
Mitouflet aside. They told him it would be a painful and injurious
thing to the whole canton if a violent death were the result of this
affair; they represented the pitiable distress of Madame Vernier, and
conjured him to find some way to arrange matters and save the credit
of the district.
"I take it all upon myself," said the sagacious landlord.
In the evening he went up to the traveller's room carrying pens, ink,
and paper.
"What have you got there?" asked Gaudissart.
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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 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass: sequence to my purpose whilst the fact remains,
in all its glaring odiousness, that slaveholders have
ordained, and by law established, that the children
of slave women shall in all cases follow the condi-
tion of their mothers; and this is done too obviously
to administer to their own lusts, and make a grati-
fication of their wicked desires profitable as well as
pleasurable; for by this cunning arrangement, the
slaveholder, in cases not a few, sustains to his slaves
the double relation of master and father.
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave |
