| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: The words were greeted with general laughter.
"We are innocent," said the young men.
"Innocent or guilty," said the abbe, "mount your horses and make for
the frontier. There you can prove your innocence. You could overcome a
sentence by default; you will never overcome a sentence rendered by
popular passion and instigated by prejudice. Remember the words of
President de Harlay, 'If I were accused of carrying off the towers of
Notre-Dame the first thing I should do would be to run away.'"
"To run away would be to admit we were guilty," said the Marquis de
Simeuse.
"Don't do it!" cried Laurence.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac: affection was a necessity.
Whether it was that his will powerfully projected had modified the
character of his companion, or whether, because she found abundant
food in her predatory excursions in the desert, she respected the
man's life, he began to fear for it no longer, seeing her so well
tamed.
He devoted the greater part of his time to sleep, but he was obliged
to watch like a spider in its web that the moment of his deliverance
might not escape him, if anyone should pass the line marked by the
horizon. He had sacrificed his shirt to make a flag with, which he
hung at the top of a palm tree, whose foliage he had torn off. Taught
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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 The Iliad by Homer: spear. I should have even killed the two Moliones, sons of Actor,
unless their real father, Neptune lord of the earthquake, had
hidden them in a thick mist and borne them out of the fight.
Thereon Jove vouchsafed the Pylians a great victory, for we
chased them far over the plain, killing the men and bringing in
their armour, till we had brought our horses to Buprasium, rich
in wheat, and to the Olenian rock, with the hill that is called
Alision, at which point Minerva turned the people back. There I
slew the last man and left him; then the Achaeans drove their
horses back from Buprasium to Pylos and gave thanks to Jove among
the gods, and among mortal men to Nestor.
The Iliad |
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 Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: these qualities are only known to us as exhibited in persons; and if we
believe them to have any absolute and eternal existence at all, to be
objective, and independent of us, and the momentary moods and sentiments
of our own mind, they must exist in some absolute and eternal person, or
they are mere notions, abstractions, words, which have no counterparts.
But here arose a puzzle in the mind of Philo, as it in reality had, we
may see, in the minds of Socrates and Plato. How could he reconcile the
idea of that absolute and eternal one Being, that Zeus, Father of Gods
and men, self-perfect, self-contained, without change or motion, in
whom, as a Jew, he believed even more firmly than the Platonists, with
the Daemon of Socrates, the Divine Teacher whom both Plato and Solomon
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