| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: There are, in fact, men who have something of the monkey in them by
nature, and to whom the assumption of the most engaging forms of
sentiment is so easy that the actor is not detected; and Lousteau's
natural gifts had been fully developed on the stage on which he had
hitherto figured.
Between the months of April and July, when Dinah expected her
confinement, she discovered why it was that Lousteau had not triumphed
over poverty; he was idle and had no power of will. The brain, to be
sure, must obey its own laws; it recognizes neither the exigencies of
life nor the voice of honor; a man cannot write a great book because a
woman is dying, or to pay a discreditable debt, or to bring up a
The Muse of the Department |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Door in the Wall, et. al. by H. G. Wells: followed hour through a terrible suspense, and the star rose not.
Once again men set their eyes upon the old constellations they had
counted lost to them forever. In England it was hot and clear
overhead, though the ground quivered perpetually, but in the
tropics, Sirius and Capella and Aldebaran showed through a veil of
steam. And when at last the great star rose near ten hours late,
the sun rose close upon it, and in the centre of its white heart
was a disc of black.
Over Asia it was the star had begun to fall behind the
movement of the sky, and then suddenly, as it hung over India, its
light had been veiled. All the plain of India from the mouth of
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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 Statesman by Plato: our discourse only aims at the dialectical improvement of ourselves and
others.--Having made our apology, we return once more to the king or
statesman, and proceed to contrast him with pretenders in the same line
with him, under their various forms of government. (5) His characteristic
is, that he alone has science, which is superior to law and written
enactments; these do but spring out of the necessities of mankind, when
they are in despair of finding the true king. (6) The sciences which are
most akin to the royal are the sciences of the general, the judge, the
orator, which minister to him, but even these are subordinate to him. (7)
Fixed principles are implanted by education, and the king or statesman
completes the political web by marrying together dissimilar natures, the
Statesman |
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 Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: abomination to every democrat. But suppose they are not political
sentiments! Suppose they are merely a record of observed fact. John
Stuart Mill told our British workmen that they were mostly liars.
Carlyle told us all that we are mostly fools. Matthew Arnold and
Ruskin were more circumstantial and more abusive. Everybody,
including the workers themselves, know that they are dirty, drunken,
foul-mouthed, ignorant, gluttonous, prejudiced: in short, heirs to
the peculiar ills of poverty and slavery, as well as co-heirs with the
plutocracy to all the failings of human nature. Even Shelley
admitted, 200 years after Shakespear wrote Coriolanus, that universal
suffrage was out of the question. Surely the real test, not of
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