| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: clamoring for your pay in advance,--all the more because Monsieur
Rigou, who is not legally bound to give you seven and a half per cent
and the interest on your interest, will make you in court a legal
tender of your twenty thousand francs, and you will not be able to
touch that money until your suit, prolonged by legal trickery, shall
be decided by the court at Ville-aux-Fayes. But if you act wisely you
will find that when Monsieur Rigou gets possession of your pavilion at
Les Aigues, you will have very nearly thirty thousand francs in his
hands and thirty thousand more which the said Rigou may entrust to
you,--which will be all the more advantageous to you then because the
peasantry will have flung them themselves upon the estate of Les
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: mankind, not to determine to look for support, rather to humouring
their passions, than courting their approbation by the integrity
of her conduct. A deadly blight had met her at the very threshold
of existence; and the wretchedness of her mother seemed a heavy
weight fastened on her innocent neck, to drag her down to perdition.
She could not heroically determine to succour an unfortunate; but,
offended at the bare supposition that she could be deceived with
the same ease as a common servant, she no longer curbed her curiosity;
and, though she never seriously fathomed her own intentions, she
would sit, every moment she could steal from observation, listening
to the tale, which Maria was eager to relate with all the persuasive
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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 Reef by Edith Wharton: understood lately that if it belonged to me it would
gradually gobble me up. I want to get out of it, into a
life that's big and ugly and struggling. If I can extract
beauty out of THAT, so much the better: that'll prove my
vocation. But I want to MAKE beauty, not be drowned in
the ready-made, like a bee in a pot of honey."
Darrow knew that he was being appealed to for corroboration
of these views and for encouragement in the course to which
they pointed. To his own ears his answers sounded now curt,
now irrelevant: at one moment he seemed chillingly
indifferent, at another he heard himself launching out on a
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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 What is Man? by Mark Twain: tom-cat.
The Shakespearite will Reason like this--(that is not my
word, it is his). He will say the kitten MAY HAVE BEEN attending
school when nobody was noticing; therefore WE ARE WARRANTED IN
ASSUMING that it did so; also, it COULD HAVE BEEN training in a
court-clerk's office when no one was noticing; since that could
have happened, WE ARE JUSTIFIED IN ASSUMING that it did happen;
it COULD HAVE STUDIED CATOLOGY IN A GARRET when no one was
noticing--therefore it DID; it COULD HAVE attended cat-assizes on
the shed-roof nights, for recreation, when no one was noticing,
and have harvested a knowledge of cat court-forms and cat lawyer-
What is Man? |
