| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: matter up, though it remained stamped on his memory. One day that
year, one of the physicians of the Hotel-Dieu took Desplein by
the arm, as if to question him, in Bianchon's presence.
"What were you doing at Saint-Sulpice, my dear master?" said he.
"I went to see a priest who has a diseased knee-bone, and to whom
the Duchesse d'Angouleme did me the honor to recommend me," said
Desplein.
The questioner took this defeat for an answer; not so Bianchon.
"Oh, he goes to see damaged knees in church!--He went to mass,"
said the young man to himself.
Bianchon resolved to watch Desplein. He remembered the day and
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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 Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: thick grey hair and black eyebrows, walks in. He is a
good-natured man and an excellent comrade. He comes of a
fortunate and talented old noble family which has played a
prominent part in the history of literature and enlightenment. He
is himself intelligent, talented, and very highly educated, but
has his oddities. To a certain extent we are all odd and all
queer fish, but in his oddities there is something exceptional,
apt to cause anxiety among his acquaintances. I know a good many
people for whom his oddities completely obscure his good
qualities.
Coming in to us, he slowly takes off his gloves and says in his
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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 Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: sufferer till he became inured to school-life. Taught at last by cruel
experience, he was obliged to "look after his things," to use the
school phrase. He was forced to take care of his locker, his desk, his
clothes, his shoes; to protect his ink, his books, his copy-paper, and
his pens from pilferers; in short, to give his mind to the thousand
details of our trivial life, to which more selfish and commonplace
minds devoted such strict attention--thus infallibly securing prizes
for "proficiency" and "good conduct"--while they were overlooked by a
boy of the highest promise, who, under the hand of an almost divine
imagination, gave himself up with rapture to the flow of his ideas.
This was not all. There is a perpetual struggle going on between the
Louis Lambert |
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 Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: whence I had learned to think of something more perfect than myself; and I
clearly recognized that I must hold this notion from some nature which in
reality was more perfect. As for the thoughts of many other objects
external to me, as of the sky, the earth, light, heat, and a thousand
more, I was less at a loss to know whence these came; for since I remarked
in them nothing which seemed to render them superior to myself, I could
believe that, if these were true, they were dependencies on my own nature,
in so far as it possessed a certain perfection, and, if they were false,
that I held them from nothing, that is to say, that they were in me
because of a certain imperfection of my nature. But this could not be the
case with-the idea of a nature more perfect than myself; for to receive it
Reason Discourse |
