| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: strange to my surroundings as the first man upon the earth, an
inland castaway - was to find a fraction of my day-dreams realised.
I was on the skirts of a little wood of birch, sprinkled with a few
beeches; behind, it adjoined another wood of fir; and in front, it
broke up and went down in open order into a shallow and meadowy
dale. All around there were bare hilltops, some near, some far
away, as the perspective closed or opened, but none apparently much
higher than the rest. The wind huddled the trees. The golden
specks of autumn in the birches tossed shiveringly. Overhead the
sky was full of strings and shreds of vapour, flying, vanishing,
reappearing, and turning about an axis like tumblers, as the wind
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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 Deputy of Arcis by Honore de Balzac: had been eighteen years a clerk in Grevin's office with no means of
becoming himself a notary. His father, son of the justice of peace,
had died of a so-called apoplexy, having gone wrong in business.
The Comte de Gondreville, however, with whom old Pigoult had relations
dating back to 1793, lent money for the necessary security, and thus
enabled the grandson of the judge who made the first examination in
the Simeuse case to buy the practice of his master, Grevin. Achille
had set up his office in the Place de l'Eglise, in a house belonging
to the Comte de Gondreville, which the latter had leased to him at so
low a price that any one could see how desirous that crafty politician
was to hold the leading notary of Arcis in the hollow of his hand.
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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 Protagoras by Plato: following mode of payment:--When a man has been my pupil, if he likes he
pays my price, but there is no compulsion; and if he does not like, he has
only to go into a temple and take an oath of the value of the instructions,
and he pays no more than he declares to be their value.
Such is my Apologue, Socrates, and such is the argument by which I
endeavour to show that virtue may be taught, and that this is the opinion
of the Athenians. And I have also attempted to show that you are not to
wonder at good fathers having bad sons, or at good sons having bad fathers,
of which the sons of Polycleitus afford an example, who are the companions
of our friends here, Paralus and Xanthippus, but are nothing in comparison
with their father; and this is true of the sons of many other artists. As
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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 Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: itself; for, on the contrary, my design was singly to find ground of
assurance, and cast aside the loose earth and sand, that I might reach
the rock or the clay. In this, as appears to me, I was successful enough;
for, since I endeavored to discover the falsehood or incertitude of the
propositions I examined, not by feeble conjectures, but by clear and
certain reasonings, I met with nothing so doubtful as not to yield some
conclusion of adequate certainty, although this were merely the inference,
that the matter in question contained nothing certain. And, just as in
pulling down an old house, we usually reserve the ruins to contribute
towards the erection, so, in destroying such of my opinions as I judged to
be Ill-founded, I made a variety of observations and acquired an amount of
Reason Discourse |
