| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: dogma with other truths which lie beside it, and without which it is
always incomplete, and sometimes altogether barren.
But such schools of science, founded on such a ground as this, on the
mere instinct of curiosity, had little chance of originality or
vitality. All the great schools of the world, the elder Greek
philosophy, the Alexandrian, the present Baconian school of physics,
have had a deeper motive for their search, a far higher object which
they hope to discover. But indeed, the Mussulmans did not so much wish
to discover truth, as to cultivate their own intellects. For that
purpose a sharp and subtle systematist, like Aristotle, was the very man
whom they required; and from the destruction of Alexandria may date the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Adam Bede by George Eliot: looking at each other: one with a wild hard despair in it, the
other full of sad yearning love. Dinah unconsciously opened her
arms and stretched them out.
"Don't you know me, Hetty? Don't you remember Dinah? Did you
think I wouldn't come to you in trouble?"
Hetty kept her eyes fixed on Dinah's face--at first like an animal
that gazes, and gazes, and keeps aloof.
"I'm come to be with you, Hetty--not to leave you--to stay with
you--to be your sister to the last."
Slowly, while Dinah was speaking, Hetty rose, took a step forward,
and was clasped in Dinah's arms.
Adam Bede |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: standing in front of a magnificently framed painting.
We stood for a moment gazing at that marvel of art, which seemed the
work of some supernatural brush. The picture represented Adonis
stretched out on a lion's skin. The lamp, in an alabaster vase,
hanging in the centre of the boudoir, cast upon the canvas a soft
light which enabled us to grasp all the beauties of the picture.
"Does such a perfect creature exist?" she asked me, after examining
attentively, and not without a sweet smile of satisfaction, the
exquisite grace of the outlines, the attitude, the color, the hair, in
fact everything.
"He is too beautiful for a man," she added, after such a scrutiny 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 The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: of Louis XV., he called me, in jest, Mademoiselle de Vandenesse; but
my conduct pleased him. I am convinced that the habit of patience I
acquired in my childhood and practised at Clochegourde had much to do
in my winning the favor of the king, who was always most kind to me.
He no doubt took a fancy to read my letters, for he soon gave up his
notion of my life as that of a young girl. One day when the duke was
on duty, and I was writing at the king's dictation, the latter
suddenly remarked, in that fine, silvery voice of his, to which he
could give, when he chose, the biting tone of epigram:--
"So that poor devil of a Mortsauf persists in living?"
"Yes," replied the duke.
The Lily of the Valley |
