| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: other than knowledge, as Protagoras attempted to prove, then clearly virtue
cannot be taught; but if virtue is entirely knowledge, as you are seeking
to show, then I cannot but suppose that virtue is capable of being taught.
Protagoras, on the other hand, who started by saying that it might be
taught, is now eager to prove it to be anything rather than knowledge; and
if this is true, it must be quite incapable of being taught.' Now I,
Protagoras, perceiving this terrible confusion of our ideas, have a great
desire that they should be cleared up. And I should like to carry on the
discussion until we ascertain what virtue is, whether capable of being
taught or not, lest haply Epimetheus should trip us up and deceive us in
the argument, as he forgot us in the story; I prefer your Prometheus to
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Macbeth by William Shakespeare: The ayre is delicate.
Enter Lady.
King. See, see our honor'd Hostesse:
The Loue that followes vs, sometime is our trouble,
Which still we thanke as Loue. Herein I teach you,
How you shall bid God-eyld vs for your paines,
And thanke vs for your trouble
Lady. All our seruice,
In euery point twice done, and then done double,
Were poore, and single Businesse, to contend
Against those Honors deepe, and broad,
Macbeth |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: eyes, to the great Green Drake (Ephemera vulgata), known to all
fishermen as the prince of trout-flies. These animals, their
habits, their miraculous transformations, might give many an hour's
quiet amusement to an invalid, laid on a sofa, or imprisoned in a
sick-room, and debarred from reading, unless by some such means,
any page of that great green book outside, whose pen is the finger
of God, whose covers are the fire kingdoms and the star kingdoms,
and its leaves the heather-bells, and the polypes of the sea, and
the gnats above the summer stream.
I said just now, that happy was the sportsman who was also a
naturalist. And, having once mentioned these curious water-flies,
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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 A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: the expense of registration. Now it so happened at this juncture,
Maxime, being of ripe age, was seized with one of the fancies peculiar
to the man of fifty--"
"Antonia!" exclaimed La Palferine. "That Antonia whose fortune I made
by writing to ask for a toothbrush!"
"Her real name is Chocardelle," said Malaga, not over well pleased by
the fine-sounding pseudonym.
"The same," continued Desroches.
"It was the only mistake Maxime ever made in his life. But what would
you have, no vice is absolutely perfect?" put in Bixiou.
"Maxime had still to learn what sort of a life a man may be led into
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