| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Message by Honore de Balzac: women of rank, women of taste, intellectual and clever; when we
had endowed them with little feet, a satin, nay, a delicately
fragrant skin, then came the admission--on his part that Madame
Such-an-one was thirty-eight years old, and on mine that I
worshiped a woman of forty. Whereupon, as if released on either
side from some kind of vague fear, our confidences came thick and
fast, when we found that we were in the same confraternity of
love. It was which of us should overtop the other in sentiment.
One of us had traveled six hundred miles to see his mistress for
an hour. The other, at the risk of being shot for a wolf, had
prowled about her park to meet her one night. Out came all our
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Heritage of the Desert by Zane Grey: It was a relief to have the unattainable horizon line blotted out. But
by-and-by the opaque gloom brought home to him, as the day had never
done, the reality of his solitude. He was alone in this immense place of
barrenness, and his dumb companions were the world to him. Wolf pattered
onward, a silent guide; and Silvermane followed, never lagging,
sure-footed in the dark, faithful to his master. All the love Hare had
borne the horse was as nothing to that which came to him on this desert
night. In and out, round and round, ever winding, ever zigzagging,
Silvermane hung close to Wolf, and the sandy lanes between the bowlders
gave forth no sound. Dog and horse, free to choose their trail, trotted
onward miles and miles into the night.
The Heritage of the Desert |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle: and lads and lasses were dancing to the music. But the crowd were
gathered most of all around a ring where the wrestling was going forward,
and thither Sir Richard and his men turned their steps.
Now when the judges of the wrestling saw Sir Richard coming and knew
who he was, the chief of them came down from the bench where he and
the others sat, and went to the Knight and took him by the hand,
beseeching him to come and sit with them and judge the sport.
So Sir Richard got down from his horse and went with the others
to the bench raised beside the ring.
Now there had been great doings that morning, for a certain yeoman
named Egbert, who came from Stoke over in Staffordshire, had thrown
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood |
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 Economist by Xenophon: for attempts to cure the text.
[5] See Cobet, "N. L." 580, reading {uphemenous}, or if {aphemenous}
transl. "to abandon."
Next we held it as proved that there was no better employment for a
gentleman--we described him as a man beautiful and good--than this of
husbandry, by which human beings procure to themselves the necessaries
of life. This same employment, moreover, was, as we agreed, at once
the easiest to learn[6] and the pleasantest to follow, since it gives
to the limbs beauty and hardihood, whilst permitting[7] to the soul
leisure to satisfy the claims of friendship and of civic duty.
[6] {raste mathein}. Vide infra, not supra.
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