| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: which the most general principles of morals may be presented to us are many
and various. The mind of man has been more than usually active in thinking
about man. The conceptions of harmony, happiness, right, freedom,
benevolence, self-love, have all of them seemed to some philosopher or
other the truest and most comprehensive expression of morality. There is
no difference, or at any rate no great difference, of opinion about the
right and wrong of actions, but only about the general notion which
furnishes the best explanation or gives the most comprehensive view of
them. This, in the language of Kant, is the sphere of the metaphysic of
ethics. But these two uncertainties at either end, en tois malista
katholou and en tois kath ekasta, leave space enough for an intermediate
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: his feet rubbed with a soft brush lathered with English soap.
"Have I not the most devoted attachment to you," replied Paul de
Manerville, "and do I not like you because I know your
superiority? . . ."
"You must have noticed, if you are in the least capable of observing
any moral fact, that women love fops," went on De Marsay, without
replying in any way to Paul's declaration except by a look. "Do you
know why women love fops? My friend, fops are the only men who take
care of themselves. Now, to take excessive care of oneself, does it
not imply that one takes care in oneself of what belongs to another?
The man who does not belong to himself is precisely the man on whom
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: It was enough. It recalled me from the forgotten eon to which my
brain had flown and left me once again a modern man battling with
a clumsy, unskilled brute. No longer did my jaws snap at the
hairy throat before me; but instead my knife sought and found a
space between two ribs over the savage heart. Kho voiced a single
horrid scream, stiffened spasmodically and sank to the earth.
And Lys threw herself into my arms. All the fears and sorrows of
the past were wiped away, and once again I was the happiest of men.
With some misgivings I shortly afterward cast my eyes upward
toward the precarious ledge which ran before my cave, for it
seemed to me quite beyond all reason to expect a dainty modern
The Land that Time Forgot |
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 Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: he had time to think what a wonderful affair it was, he beheld
an abundant harvest of what looked like human beings, armed
with helmets and breastplates, shields, swords, and spears; and
before they were well out of the earth, they brandished their
weapons, and clashed them one against another, seeming to
think, little while as they had yet lived, that they had wasted
too much of life without a battle. Every tooth of the dragon
had produced one of these sons of deadly mischief.
Up sprouted also a great many trumpeters; and with the first
breath that they drew, they put their brazen trumpets to their
lips, and sounded a tremendous and ear-shattering blast, so
Tanglewood Tales |
