| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: "We are the attorneys of public opinion."
The other kind of criticism is a science. It necessitates a thorough
comprehension of each work, a lucid insight into the tendencies of the
age, the adoption of a system, and faith in fixed principles--that is
to say, a scheme of jurisprudence, a summing-up, and a verdict. The
critic is then a magistrate of ideas, the censor of his time; he
fulfils a sacred function; while in the former case he is but an
acrobat who turns somersaults for a living so long as he had a leg to
stand on. Between Claude Vignon and Lousteau lay the gulf that divides
mere dexterity from art.
Dinah, whose mind was soon freed from rust, and whose intellect was by
The Muse of the Department |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: Imitation is a necessity for him, provided always that the
imitation is quite easy. It is this necessity that makes the
influence of what is called fashion so powerful. Whether in the
matter of opinions, ideas, literary manifestations, or merely of
dress, how many persons are bold enough to run counter to the
fashion? It is by examples not by arguments that crowds are
guided. At every period there exists a small number of
individualities which react upon the remainder and are imitated
by the unconscious mass. It is needful however, that these
individualities should not be in too pronounced disagreement with
received ideas. Were they so, to imitate them would be too
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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 United States Declaration of Independence: injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment
of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts
be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary
for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate
and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation
till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended,
he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of
large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish
United States Declaration of Independence |
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 Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: the passing stroller with the epithet: melancholy, the apparently
objectless promenades of the dreamer.
He who writes these lines has long been a prowler about the barriers
of Paris, and it is for him a source of profound souvenirs.
That close-shaven turf, those pebbly paths, that chalk, those pools,
those harsh monotonies of waste and fallow lands, the plants
of early market-garden suddenly springing into sight in a bottom,
that mixture of the savage and the citizen, those vast desert nooks
where the garrison drums practise noisily, and produce a sort of
lisping of battle, those hermits by day and cut-throats by night,
that clumsy mill which turns in the wind, the hoisting-wheels
Les Miserables |
