| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: Modeste often conjured away her troubles by practising, without a
master. Born a musician, she played to enliven her mother. She sang by
nature, and loved the German airs which her mother taught her. From
these lessons and these attempts at self-instruction came a phenomenon
not uncommon to natures with a musical vocation; Modeste composed, as
far as a person ignorant of the laws of harmony can be said to
compose, tender little lyric melodies. Melody is to music what imagery
and sentiment are to poetry, a flower that blossoms spontaneously.
Consequently, nations have had melodies before harmony,--botany comes
later than the flower. In like manner, Modeste, who knew nothing of
the painter's art except what she had seen her sister do in the way of
Modeste Mignon |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: that for this price France possesses the most inquisitorial, fussy,
ferreting, scribbling, paper-blotting, fault-finding old housekeeper
of a civil service on God's earth. Not a copper farthing of the
nation's money is spent or hoarded that is not ordered by a note,
proved by vouchers, produced and re-produced on balance-sheets, and
receipted for when paid; orders and receipts are registered on the
rolls, and checked and verified by an army of men in spectacles. If
there is the slightest mistake in the form of these precious
documents, the clerk is terrified, for he lives on such minutiae. Some
nations would be satisfied to get as far as this; but Napoleon went
further. That great organizer appointed supreme magistrates of a court
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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 Jolly Corner by Henry James: looked - to shift and expand and contract.
It was as if there had been something within it, protected by
indistinctness and corresponding in extent with the opaque surface
behind, the painted panels of the last barrier to his escape, of
which the key was in his pocket. The indistinctness mocked him
even while he stared, affected him as somehow shrouding or
challenging certitude, so that after faltering an instant on his
step he let himself go with the sense that here WAS at last
something to meet, to touch, to take, to know - something all
unnatural and dreadful, but to advance upon which was the condition
for him either of liberation or of supreme defeat. The penumbra,
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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 Barlaam and Ioasaph by St. John of Damascus: Now, since all went well with him, and since he had delivered all
the people from their ancient and ancestral error, and made them
servants of him who redeemed us from evil servitude by his own
precious blood, he turned his thoughts to his next task, the
virtue of almsgiving. Temperance and righteousness he had
already attained; he wore on his brow the crown of temperance,
and wrapped about him the purple of righteousness. He called to
mind the uncertainty of earthly riches, how they resemble the
running of river waters. Therefore made he haste to lay up his
treasure where neither `moth nor rust doth corrupt and where
thieves do not break through nor steal.' So he began to
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