| 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: been to the first performance of Leon Gozlan's first play, /La Main
Droite et la Main Gauche/ (The Right Hand and the Left).
"What are you thinking about?" asked the lawyer, alarmed at his idol's
dejection.
This deep and persistent melancholy, though disguised by the Countess,
was a perilous malady for which Monsieur de Clagny knew no remedy; for
true love is often clumsy, especially when it is not reciprocated.
True love takes its expression from the character. Now, this good man
loved after the fashion of Alceste, when Madame de la Baudraye wanted
to be loved after the manner of Philinte. The meaner side of love can
never get on with the Misanthrope's loyalty. Thus, Dinah had taken
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 Hiero by Xenophon: treatise see Lys. "Olymp."; and Prof. Jebb's remarks on the
fragment, "Att. Or." i. p. 203 foll. Grote, "H. G." xi. 40 foll.;
"Plato, iii. 577.
No, no! I tell you, Hiero, your battlefield, your true arena is with
the champion presidents of rival states, above whose lesser heads be
it your destiny to raise this state, of which you are the patron and
supreme head, to some unprecedented height of fortune, which if you
shall achieve, be certain you will be approved victorious in a contest
the noblest and the most stupendous in the world.
Since what follows? In the first place, you will by one swift stroke
have brought about the very thing you have set your heart on, you will
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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 Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: arterial vein, were it not that the blood of the venous artery, having
only been in the lungs after it has passed through the heart, is thinner,
and rarefies more readily, and in a higher degree, than the blood which
proceeds immediately from the hollow vein? And what can physicians
conjecture from feeling the pulse unless they know that according as the
blood changes its nature it can be rarefied by the warmth of the heart, in
a higher or lower degree, and more or less quickly than before? And if it
be inquired how this heat is communicated to the other members, must it
not be admitted that this is effected by means of the blood, which,
passing through the heart, is there heated anew, and thence diffused over
all the body? Whence it happens, that if the blood be withdrawn from any
Reason Discourse |
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 Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: and before he knew it he clasped empty air, and half the room was
between them.
She was holding up a little coral charm and laughing. "I took it
from your fob," she said. "It is of no value, is it? And I
shall not get any of the money, you know."
She continued to laugh strangely, and the rouge burned like fire
in her ashen face.
"What are you talking of?" he said.
"They never give me anything but the clothes I wear. And I shall
never see you again, Anthony!" She gave him a dreadful look.
"Oh, my poor boy, my poor love--'I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU,
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