| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: not imaginable seems to them not intelligible. The truth of this is
sufficiently manifest from the single circumstance, that the philosophers
of the schools accept as a maxim that there is nothing in the
understanding which was not previously in the senses, in which however it
is certain that the ideas of God and of the soul have never been; and it
appears to me that they who make use of their imagination to comprehend
these ideas do exactly the some thing as if, in order to hear sounds or
smell odors, they strove to avail themselves of their eyes; unless indeed
that there is this difference, that the sense of sight does not afford us
an inferior assurance to those of smell or hearing; in place of which,
neither our imagination nor our senses can give us assurance of anything
 Reason Discourse |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: turned, and she saw, in a room beneath her, the Marquis de Montauran,
who was loading a musket. The opening, hidden by a little panel on
which the picture was gummed, seemed to form some opening in the
ceiling of the adjoining chamber, which, no doubt, was the bedroom of
the royalist general. D'Orgemont closed the opening with much
precaution, and looked at the girl sternly.
"Don't say a word if you love your life. You haven't thrown your
grappling-iron on a worthless building. Do you know that the Marquis
de Montauran is worth more than one hundred thousand francs a year
from lands which have not yet been confiscated? And I read in the
Primidi de l'Ille-et-Vilaine a decree of the Consuls putting an end to
 The Chouans |