| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: Church the Potius mori quam foedari that you admire in republican
tenets,--you will understand the sorrow of the Abbe de Sponde when he
saw in his niece's salon the apostate priest, the renegade, the
pervert, the heretic, that enemy of the Church, the guilty taker of
the Constitutional oath. Du Bousquier, whose secret ambition was to
lay down the law to the town, wished, as a first proof of his power,
to reconcile the minister of Saint-Leonard with the rector of the
parish, and he succeeded. His wife thought he had accomplished a work
of peace where the immovable abbe saw only treachery. The bishop came
to visit du Bousquier, and seemed glad of the cessation of
hostilities. The virtues of the Abbe Francois had conquered prejudice,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: at all. For we who are working in art cannot accept any theory of
beauty in exchange for beauty itself, and, so far from desiring to
isolate it in a formula appealing to the intellect, we, on the
contrary, seek to materialise it in a form that gives joy to the
soul through the senses. We want to create it, not to define it.
The definition should follow the work: the work should not adapt
itself to the definition.
Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any
conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into
weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the
ideal at all you must not strip it of vitality. You must find it
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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 Jungle by Upton Sinclair: Elzbieta started, and turned pale. "Why!" she gasped. "What do you mean?"
But Jurgis did not answer. He pushed her aside, and strode to the
bedroom door and opened it.
Ona was sitting on the bed. She turned a startled look upon him as
he entered. He closed the door in Elzbieta's face, and went toward
his wife. "Where have you been?" he demanded.
She had her hands clasped tightly in her lap, and he saw that her
face was as white as paper, and drawn with pain. She gasped once or
twice as she tried to answer him, and then began, speaking low,
and swiftly. "Jurgis, I--I think I have been out of my mind. I started
to come last night, and I could not find the way. I walked--I walked
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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 My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: Forester required medical assistance. The physician of the
family attended, and shook his head on feeling her pulse.
"Here has been," he said, "a violent and sudden shock on the
nerves. I must know how it has happened."
Lady Bothwell admitted they had visited the conjurer, and that
Lady Forester had received some bad news respecting her husband,
Sir Philip.
"That rascally quack would make my fortune, were he to stay in
Edinburgh," said the graduate; "this is the seventh nervous case
I have heard of his making for me, and all by effect of terror."
He next examined the composing draught which Lady Bothwell had
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