| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: possible for a lover to make a woman reverse an unfavorable decision,
but such a change, my dear Paul, is the Waterloo of husbands. Like
Napoleon, the husband is thenceforth condemned to victories which, in
spite of their number, do not prevent the first defeat from crushing
him. The woman, so flattered by the perseverance, so delighted with
the ardor of a lover, calls the same things brutality in a husband.
You, who talk of marrying, and who will marry, have you ever meditated
on the Civil Code? I myself have never muddied my feet in that hovel
of commentators, that garret of gossip, called the Law-school. I have
never so much as opened the Code; but I see its application on the
vitals of society. The Code, my dear Paul, makes woman a ward; it
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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 Mayflower Compact: for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance
of the Ends aforesaid; And by Virtue hereof do enact,
constitute, and frame, such just and equall Laws, Ordinances,
Acts, Constitutions, and Offices, from time to time,
as shall be thought most meete and convenient for the
Generall Good of the Colonie; unto which we promise
all due Submission and Obedience.
In Witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names
at Cape Cod the eleventh of November, in the Raigne of our
Sovereigne Lord, King James of England, France, and Ireland,
the eighteenth, and of Scotland, the fiftie-fourth,
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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 On Horsemanship by Xenophon: learn that the Persians and Odrysians all run races down precipitous
slopes;[5] and their horses are every bit as sound as our own.[6]
[5] Cf. "Anab." IV. viii. 28; and so the Georgians to this day
(Chardin ap. Courier, op. cit. p. 70, n. 1).
[6] Lit. "as are those of the Hellenes."
Nor must we omit another topic: how the rider is to accomodate himself
to these several movements.[7] Thus, when the horse breaks off into a
gallop, the rider ought to bend forward, since the horse will be less
likely to slip from under; and so to pitch his rider off. So again in
pulling him up short[8] the rider should lean back; and thus escape a
shock. In leaping a ditch or tearing up a steep incline, it is no bad
On Horsemanship |
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 Critias by Plato: Outside the Acropolis and under the sides of the hill there dwelt artisans,
and such of the husbandmen as were tilling the ground near; the warrior
class dwelt by themselves around the temples of Athene and Hephaestus at
the summit, which moreover they had enclosed with a single fence like the
garden of a single house. On the north side they had dwellings in common
and had erected halls for dining in winter, and had all the buildings which
they needed for their common life, besides temples, but there was no
adorning of them with gold and silver, for they made no use of these for
any purpose; they took a middle course between meanness and ostentation,
and built modest houses in which they and their children's children grew
old, and they handed them down to others who were like themselves, always
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