| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: other, and none of the Hellenes dared to assist either the Eretrians or the
Athenians, except the Lacedaemonians, and they arrived a day too late for
the battle; but the rest were panic-stricken and kept quiet, too happy in
having escaped for a time. He who has present to his mind that conflict
will know what manner of men they were who received the onset of the
barbarians at Marathon, and chastened the pride of the whole of Asia, and
by the victory which they gained over the barbarians first taught other men
that the power of the Persians was not invincible, but that hosts of men
and the multitude of riches alike yield to valour. And I assert that those
men are the fathers not only of ourselves, but of our liberties and of the
liberties of all who are on the continent, for that was the action to which
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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 Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: of commission, which he graciously accepted. The bargain concluded and
the treaty signed, our traveller was put in training, or we might say
weaned, by the secretary-general of the enterprise, who freed his mind
of its swaddling-clothes, showed him the dark holes of the business,
taught him its dialect, took the mechanism apart bit by bit, dissected
for his instruction the particular public he was expected to gull,
crammed him with phrases, fed him with impromptu replies, provisioned
him with unanswerable arguments, and, so to speak, sharpened the file
of the tongue which was about to operate upon the life of France.
The puppet amply rewarded the pains bestowed upon him. The heads of
the company boasted of the illustrious Gaudissart, showed him such
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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 Underdogs by Mariano Azuela: watermelon, moldy masses of mangoes and sugarcane, all
mixed up with cornhusks from tamales and human offal.
Demetrio's calloused hands shuffled through the bril-
liant coins, counting and counting. Recovering from his
nausea, Luis Cervantes pulled out a small box of Fallieres
phosphate and poured forth rings, brooches, pendants,
and countless valuable jewels.
"Look here, General, if this mess doesn't blow over
(and it doesn't look as though it would), if the revolu-
tion keeps on, there's enough here already for us to live
on abroad quite comfortably."
The Underdogs |
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 Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: form for a space a union with the ancient accomplice of its
guilt. I started up in bed, and sat upright, supporting myself
on my palms, as I gazed on this horrible spectre. The hag made,
as it seemed, a single and swift stride to the bed where I lay,
and squatted herself down upon it, in precisely the same attitude
which I had assumed in the extremity of horror, advancing her
diabolical countenance within half a yard of mine, with a grin
which seemed to intimate the malice and the derision of an
incarnate fiend."
Here General Browne stopped, and wiped from his brow the cold
perspiration with which the recollection of his horrible vision
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