| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: leading feeble minds astray from the straight path of virtue than the
supposition that the soul of the brutes is of the same nature with our
own; and consequently that after this life we have nothing to hope for or
fear, more than flies and ants; in place of which, when we know how far
they differ we much better comprehend the reasons which establish that the
soul is of a nature wholly independent of the body, and that consequently
it is not liable to die with the latter and, finally, because no other
causes are observed capable of destroying it, we are naturally led thence
to judge that it is immortal.
PART VI
Three years have now elapsed since I finished the treatise containing all
Reason Discourse |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson: Blinking embers, tell me true
Where are those armies marching to,
And what the burning city is
That crumbles in your furnaces!
IX
The Little Land
When at home alone I sit
And am very tired of it,
I have just to shut my eyes
To go sailing through the skies--
To go sailing far away
A Child's Garden of Verses |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: claim it aloud as my own, then, at any rate, the speech of my
children. Thus small events grow memorable by the passage of
time. As to the quality of the address itself I cannot say it
was very striking. Too short for eloquence and devoid of all
charm of tone, it consisted precisely of the three words "Look
out there!" growled out huskily above my head.
It proceeded from a big fat fellow (he had an obtrusive, hairy
double chin) in a blue woollen shirt and roomy breeches pulled up
very high, even to the level of his breastbone, by a pair of
braces quite exposed to public view. As where he stood there was
no bulwark, but only a rail and stanchions, I was able to take in
A Personal Record |
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 The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: generation followed the quest of noble pictures, leaving behind it the
necessity of completing a collection still unfinished; and thus the
taste became hereditary in the family. The hundred pictures which
adorned the gallery leading from the family building to the reception-
rooms on the first floor of the front house, as well as some fifty
others placed about the salons, were the product of the patient
researches of three centuries. Among them were choice specimens of
Rubens, Ruysdael, Vandyke, Terburg, Gerard Dow, Teniers, Mieris, Paul
Potter, Wouvermans, Rembrandt, Hobbema, Cranach, and Holbein. French
and Italian pictures were in a minority, but all were authentic and
masterly.
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