| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: governments, but are keeping these."
"What! For no other reason than that?" Nekhludoff exclaimed,
stopping at the door.
A crowd of about forty men, all dressed in prison clothes,
surrounded him and the assistant, and several began talking at
once. The assistant stopped them.
"Let some one of you speak."
A tall, good-looking peasant, a stone-mason, of about fifty,
stepped out from the rest. He told Nekhludoff that all of them
had been ordered back to their homes and were now being kept in
prison because they had no passports, yet they had passports
Resurrection |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lady Susan by Jane Austen: with some circumstances concerning herself, Sir James, and me which had
given him great uneasiness. In short, I found that she had in the first
place actually written to him to request his interference, and that, on
receiving her letter, he had conversed with her on the subject of it, in
order to understand the particulars, and to assure himself of her real
wishes. I have not a doubt but that the girl took this opportunity of
making downright love to him. I am convinced of it by the manner in which
he spoke of her. Much good may such love do him! I shall ever despise the
man who can be gratified by the passion which he never wished to inspire,
nor solicited the avowal of. I shall always detest them both. He can have
no true regard for me, or he would not have listened to her; and SHE, with
Lady Susan |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: known, the most concentrated, the most mordant, the most acid of all
forces; a singular genius who carried armed civilization in every
direction without fixing it anywhere; a man who could do everything
because he willed everything; a prodigious phenomenon of will,
conquering an illness by a battle, and yet doomed to die of disease in
bed after living in the midst of ball and bullets; a man with a code
and a sword in his brain, word and deed; a clear-sighted spirit that
foresaw everything but his own fall; a capricious politician who
risked men by handfuls out of economy, and who spared three heads--
those of Talleyrand, of Pozzo de Borgo, and of Metternich,
diplomatists whose death would have saved the French Empire, and who
|
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 Economist by Xenophon: marriage her whole experience consisted in knowing how to take the
wool and make a dress, and seeing how her mother's handmaidens had
their daily spinning-tasks assigned them? For (he added), as regards
control of appetite and self-indulgence,[9] she had received the
soundest education, and that I take to be the most important matter in
the bringing-up of man or woman.
[6] See Aristot. "Pol." vii. 16. 1335(a). See Newman, op. cit. i. 170
foll.
[7] Or, "surveillance." See "Pol. Lac." i. 3.
[8] Reading {eroito}; or if with Sauppe after Cobet, {eroin}, transl.
"talk as little as possible."
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