| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: enough to prove that proposition to be true, at least to your own
satisfaction. If you assert with the old proverb, that you may make
a silk purse out of a sow's ear, you will be stupider than I dare
suppose anyone here to be, if you cannot invent for yourselves all
the intermediate stages of the transformation, however startling.
And, indeed, if modern philosophers had stuck more closely to this
old proverb, and its defining verb "make," and tried to show how
some person or persons--let them be who they may--men, angels, or
gods--made the sow's ear into the silk purse, and the savage into
the sage--they might have pleaded that they were still trying to
keep their feet upon the firm ground of actual experience. But
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: Modeste's duplicity and Butscha's connivance.
"Madame," he cried, "he is a serpent whom we have warmed in our
bosoms; there's no place in his contorted little body for a soul!"
Modeste put the letter for her father into the pocket of her apron,
supposing it to be that for Canalis, and came downstairs with the
letter for her lover in her hand, to see Dumay before he started for
Paris.
"What has happened to my Black Dwarf? why are you talking so loud!"
she said, appearing at the door.
"Mademoiselle, Butscha has gone to Paris, and you, no doubt, know why,
--to carry on that affair of the little architect with the sulphur
Modeste Mignon |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Stories From the Old Attic by Robert Harris: experienced in the ways of freedom. "Hey," said the older girl, "to
be free, just take these pills and free your mind from all your
cares." So the teenage girl took the pills and felt strange and
didn't sleep for three days and then closed her eyes and woke up in
the middle of the following week.
Another time she met a young man who seemed to know about the free
life. "Let me help to liberate you," he said, putting his arm
around her. And so they went to his van and drove to a vacant lot
where the young man kissed her and "liberated" her and told her to
leave and drove away.
Many days later--days that passed without recognition or
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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 Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: return to Issoudun, Max was preparing a horrible outrage for his
sensitive spirit. When Monsieur Goddet had probed the wound and
discovered that the knife, turned aside by a little pocket-book, had
happily spared Max's life (though making a serious wound), he did as
all doctors, and particularly country surgeons, do; he paved the way
for his own credit by "not answering for the patient's life"; and
then, after dressing the soldier's wound, and stating the verdict of
science to the Rabouilleuse, Jean-Jacques Rouget, Kouski, and the
Vedie, he left the house. The Rabouilleuse came in tears to her dear
Max, while Kouski and the Vedie told the assembled crowd that the
captain was in a fair way to die. The news brought nearly two hundred
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