| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: I cannot tell; but this I am assured,
I feel such sharp dissension in my breast,
Such fierce alarums both of hope and fear,
As I am sick with working of my thoughts.
Take, therefore, shipping; post, my lord, to France;
Agree to any covenants, and procure
That Lady Margaret do vouchsafe to come
To cross the seas to England, and be crown'd
King Henry's faithful and anointed queen:
For your expenses and sufficient charge,
Among the people gather up a tenth.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: petty minds that leprosy becomes a base and brutal cupidity, both
insolent and shrinking; in cultivated minds it fosters anti-social
doctrines, which serve a man as footholds by which to rise above his
superiors. May we not dignify with the title of proverb the pregnant
saying, "Tell me what thou hast, and I will tell thee of what thou art
thinking"?
Though Adolphe loved his wife, his hourly thought was: "I have made a
mistake; I have three balls and chains, but I have only two legs. I
ought to have made my fortune before I married. I could have found an
Adeline any day; but Adeline stands in the way of my getting a fortune
now."
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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 Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: can but tamely describe. In a letter written to a friend soon after
reaching New York, I said: "I felt as one might feel upon escape
from a den of hungry lions." Anguish and grief, like darkness and rain,
may be depicted; but gladness and joy, like the rainbow, defy the skill
of pen or pencil. During ten or fifteen years I had been, as it were,
dragging a heavy chain which no strength of mine could break;
I was not only a slave, but a slave for life. I might become a husband,
a father, an aged man, but through all, from birth to death, from the cradle
to the grave, I had felt myself doomed. All efforts I had previously made
to secure my freedom had not only failed, but had seemed only to rivet
my fetters the more firmly, and to render my escape more difficult.
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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 Phaedo by Plato: has sacrificed to his lusts--but an evil greater far, which is the greatest
and worst of all evils, and one of which he never thinks.
What is it, Socrates? said Cebes.
The evil is that when the feeling of pleasure or pain is most intense,
every soul of man imagines the objects of this intense feeling to be then
plainest and truest: but this is not so, they are really the things of
sight.
Very true.
And is not this the state in which the soul is most enthralled by the body?
How so?
Why, because each pleasure and pain is a sort of nail which nails and
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