| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: of Greece have terminated their chimeras and sirens, whose figures,
like all passions, are so seductive, so deceptive.
Although Henri was not a free-thinker--the phrase is always a mockery
--but a man of extraordinary power, a man as great as a man can be
without faith, the conjunction struck him. Moreover, the strongest men
are naturally the most impressionable, and consequently the most
superstitious, if, indeed, one may call superstition the prejudice of
the first thoughts, which, without doubt, is the appreciation of the
result in causes hidden to other eyes but perceptible to their own.
The Spanish girl profited by this moment of stupefaction to let
herself fall into the ecstasy of that infinite adoration which seizes
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: decide on their character. We do not consider them all as genuine until
they can be proved to be spurious, as is often maintained and still more
often implied in this and similar discussions; but should say of some of
them, that their genuineness is neither proven nor disproven until further
evidence about them can be adduced. And we are as confident that the
Epistles are spurious, as that the Republic, the Timaeus, and the Laws are
genuine.
On the whole, not a twentieth part of the writings which pass under the
name of Plato, if we exclude the works rejected by the ancients themselves
and two or three other plausible inventions, can be fairly doubted by those
who are willing to allow that a considerable change and growth may have
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Message by Honore de Balzac: husband contriving some frivolous excuse for leaving us together,
she stopped short, giving me a glance--such a glance as women
only can give you. In that look of hers there was the pardonable
curiosity of the mistress of the house confronted with a guest
dropped down upon her from the skies and innumerable doubts,
certainly warranted by the state of my clothes, by my youth and
my expression, all singularly at variance; there was all the
disdain of the adored mistress, in whose eyes all men save one
are as nothing; there were involuntary tremors and alarms; and,
above all, the thought that it was tiresome to have an unexpected
guest just now, when, no doubt, she had been scheming to enjoy
|
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 Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: I enjoy'd the universal silence,
While I listen'd ever in the silence,
If perchance the slightest sounds were stirring.
"Had she only thoughts, my thoughts resembling,
Had she only feelings, like my feelings,
She would not await the dawn of morning.
But, ere this, would surely have been with me."
Skipp'd a kitten on the floor above me,
Scratch'd a mouse a panel in the corner,
Was there in the house the slightest motion,
Ever hoped I that I heard thy footstep,
|
