| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: displacing their lungs, their heart, and all the most vital and
important organs, and entailing thereby disease, not only on
themselves but on their children after them; that for forty years
past physicians should have been telling them of the folly of what
they have been doing; and that they should as yet, in the great
majority of cases, not only turn a deaf ear to all warnings, but
actually deny the offence, of which one glance of the physician or
the sculptor, who know what shape the human body ought to be,
brings them in guilty--this, I say, is an instance of--what shall
I call it?--which deserves at once the lash, not merely of the
satirist, but of any theologian who really believes that God made
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: was, and would touch it at many places and with many parts; but that which
is one and indivisible, and does not partake of a circular nature, cannot
be touched all round in many places.
Certainly not.
But if, on the other hand, one were in itself, it would also be contained
by nothing else but itself; that is to say, if it were really in itself;
for nothing can be in anything which does not contain it.
Impossible.
But then, that which contains must be other than that which is contained?
for the same whole cannot do and suffer both at once; and if so, one will
be no longer one, but two?
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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 The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: long and sharp claws, and you have them deep in the butter.'
" 'Just let me speak, or we shall not have time to operate. I hit on
the idea as soon as I heard the news. I positively saw Mme. de
Nucingen crying; she is afraid for her fortune.'
" 'Poor little thing!' said the old Alsacien Jew, with an ironical
expression. 'Well?' he added, as du Tillet was silent.
" 'Well. At my place I have a thousand shares of a thousand francs in
our concern; Nucingen handed them over to me to put on the market, do
you understand? Good. Now let us buy up a million of Nucingen's paper
at a discount of ten or twenty per cent, and we shall make a handsome
percentage out of it. We shall be debtors and creditors both;
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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 Second Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered
from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war,
insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war--
seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation.
Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather
than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather
than let it perish. And the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed
generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it.
These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew
that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen,
Second Inaugural Address |
