| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: They are really channels for the transmission, adequate or
inadequate, of sense impressions. It is in the brain that the
poppy is red, that the apple is odorous, that the skylark sings.
Of late I have been studying with diligence the four prose poems
about Christ. At Christmas I managed to get hold of a Greek
Testament, and every morning, after I had cleaned my cell and
polished my tins, I read a little of the Gospels, a dozen verses
taken by chance anywhere. It is a delightful way of opening the
day. Every one, even in a turbulent, ill-disciplined life, should
do the same. Endless repetition, in and out of season, has spoiled
for us the freshness, the naivete, the simple romantic charm of 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 Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas: instrument?"
"The most dangerous imaginable."
"Then I formed a correct opinion of him at the first
glance."
"How so?"
"I wished to attach him to myself."
"If you judged him to be the bravest, the most acute, and
the most adroit man in France, you judged correctly."
"He must be had then, at any price."
"D'Artagnan?"
"Is not that your opinion?"
Ten Years Later |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: an interest in the conversation she displays a grace which is
otherwise buried beneath the precautions of cold demeanor, and then
she is charming. She does not seek success, but she obtains it. We
find that for which we do not seek: that saying is so often true that
some day it will be turned into a proverb. It is, in fact, the moral
of this adventure, which I should not allow myself to tell if it were
not echoing at the present moment through all the salons of Paris.
The Marquise de Listomere danced, about a month ago, with a young man
as modest as he is lively, full of good qualities, but exhibiting,
chiefly, his defects. He is ardent, but he laughs at ardor; he has
talent, and he hides it; he plays the learned man with aristocrats,
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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 Theaetetus by Plato: which he has constructed at home; we might say of him in one sense, that he
always has them because he possesses them, might we not?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And yet, in another sense, he has none of them; but they are in
his power, and he has got them under his hand in an enclosure of his own,
and can take and have them whenever he likes;--he can catch any which he
likes, and let the bird go again, and he may do so as often as he pleases.
THEAETETUS: True.
SOCRATES: Once more, then, as in what preceded we made a sort of waxen
figment in the mind, so let us now suppose that in the mind of each man
there is an aviary of all sorts of birds--some flocking together apart from
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