| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen: the angry general to attend him in his own apartment.
No summons, however, arrived; and at last, on seeing
a carriage drive up to the abbey, she was emboldened
to descend and meet him under the protection of visitors.
The breakfast-room was gay with company; and she was named
to them by the general as the friend of his daughter, in a
complimentary style, which so well concealed his resentful ire,
as to make her feel secure at least of life for the present.
And Eleanor, with a command of countenance which did
honour to her concern for his character, taking an early
occasion of saying to her, "My father only wanted me
Northanger Abbey |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Poems by Oscar Wilde: And plucks two water-lilies from the brook,
And for a time forgets the hour glass,
Then wearies of their sweets, and goes his way,
And lets the hot sun kill them, even go these lovers lay.
And Venus cried, 'It is dread Artemis
Whose bitter hand hath wrought this cruelty,
Or else that mightier maid whose care it is
To guard her strong and stainless majesty
Upon the hill Athenian, - alas!
That they who loved so well unloved into Death's house should
pass.'
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: (1) The difficulty which Socrates says that he experienced in explaining
generation and corruption; the assumption of hypotheses which proceed from
the less general to the more general, and are tested by their consequences;
the puzzle about greater and less; the resort to the method of ideas, which
to us appear only abstract terms,--these are to be explained out of the
position of Socrates and Plato in the history of philosophy. They were
living in a twilight between the sensible and the intellectual world, and
saw no way of connecting them. They could neither explain the relation of
ideas to phenomena, nor their correlation to one another. The very idea of
relation or comparison was embarrassing to them. Yet in this intellectual
uncertainty they had a conception of a proof from results, and of a moral
|
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 Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: reflecting about his crime. The French say he'll get his reckoning to-
morrow morning and be shot in twenty-four hours."
That evening I stopped short under the window of the prison during the
short time I was allowed to take exercise in the prison yard. We
talked together, and he frankly related to me his strange affair,
replying with evident truthfulness to my various questions. After that
first conversation I no longer doubted his innocence; I asked, and
obtained the favor of staying several hours with him. I saw him again
at intervals, and the poor lad let me in without concealment to all
his thoughts. He believed himself both innocent and guilty.
Remembering the horrible temptation which he had had the strength to
|
