| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: could no more be effaced from her heart than from mine. Walking slowly
down that pretty avenue and making these reflections, I was no longer
twenty-five, I was fifty years old. A man passes in a moment, even
more quickly than a woman, from youth to middle age. Though long ago I
drove these evil thoughts away from me, I was then possessed by them,
I must avow it. Perhaps I owed their presence in my mind to the
Tuileries, to the king's cabinet. Who could resist the polluting
spirit of Louis XVIII.?
When I reached the end of the avenue I turned and rushed back in the
twinkling of an eye, seeing that Henriette was still there, and alone!
I went to bid her a last farewell, bathed in repentant tears, the
The Lily of the Valley |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Legend of Montrose by Walter Scott: parent, that he has fallen into the error of assigning to the
Captain too prominent a part in the story. This is the opinion of
a critic who encamps on the highest pinnacles of literature; and
the author is so far fortunate in having incurred his censure,
that it gives his modesty a decent apology for quoting the
praise, which it would have ill-befited him to bring forward in
an unmingled state. The passage occurs in the EDINBURGH REVIEW,
No. 55, containing a criticism on IVANHOE:--
"There is too much, perhaps, of Dalgetty,--or, rather, he
engrosses too great a proportion of the work,--for, in himself,
we think he is uniformly entertaining;--and the author has
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin: Erection of the ears and raising the head, a sign of attention.
IN this and the following chapter I will describe, but only in
sufficient detail to illustrate my subject, the expressive movements,
under different states of the mind, of some few well-known animals.
But before considering them in due succession, it will save much
useless repetition to discuss certain means of expression common
to most of them.
_The emission of Sounds_.--With many kinds of animals, man included, the vocal
organs are efficient in the highest degree as a means of expression.
We have seen, in the last chapter, that when the sensorium is strongly
excited, the muscles of the body are generally thrown into violent action;
Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals |
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 Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: pass without end from one thing to another.
If some of the matters of which I have spoken in the beginning of the
"Dioptrics" and "Meteorics" should offend at first sight, because I call
them hypotheses and seem indifferent about giving proof of them, I request
a patient and attentive reading of the whole, from which I hope those
hesitating will derive satisfaction; for it appears to me that the
reasonings are so mutually connected in these treatises, that, as the last
are demonstrated by the first which are their causes, the first are in
their turn demonstrated by the last which are their effects. Nor must it
be imagined that I here commit the fallacy which the logicians call a
circle; for since experience renders the majority of these effects most
Reason Discourse |
