| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Bab:A Sub-Deb, Mary Roberts Rinehart by Mary Roberts Rinehart: Exterior beats a warm heart. I intend to be honest in this dairy,
and so I admit it. But, except for passing Fansies--one being,
alas, for a married man--I remain without the Divine Passion.
What must it be to thrill at the aproach of the loved Form? To
harken to each ring of the telephone bell, in the hope that, if it
is not the Idolised Voice, it is at least a message from it? To
waken in the morning and, looking around the familiar room, to
muze: "Today I may see him--on the way to the Post Office, or
rushing past in his racing car." And to know that at the same
moment HE to is muzing: "Today I may see her, as she exercises
herself at basket ball, or mounts her horse for a daily canter!"
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An International Episode by Henry James: keeps for the purpose."
The duchess was a little flushed; she looked all about the room, while her
daughter turned to Bessie. "My brother told us you were wonderfully clever,"
said Lady Pimlico.
"He should have said my sister," Bessie answered--"when she says
such things as that."
"Shall you be long at Branches?" the duchess asked, abruptly,
of the young girl.
"Lord Lambeth has asked us for three days," said Bessie.
"I shall go," the duchess declared, "and my daughter, too."
"That will be charming!" Bessie rejoined.
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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 Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: be developed, according to His universal law, at the will of the
surroundings in which they were placed. Hence a single substance and
motion, a single plant, a single animal, but correlations everywhere.
In fact, all affinities are linked together by contiguous similitudes;
the life of the worlds is drawn toward the centres by famished
aspiration, as you are drawn by hunger to seek food.
"To give you an example of affinities linked to similitudes (a
secondary law on which the creations of your thought are based),
music, that celestial art, is the working out of this principle; for
is it not a complement of sounds harmonized by number? Is not sound a
modification of air, compressed, dilated, echoed? You know the
Seraphita |
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 Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: at least approached toward the gods, must partake of some mysterious and
transcendental power. No one could well deny that conclusion, granting
the premiss. But of what power? What had he to show as the result of
his intimate communion with an unseen Being? The Christian Schools, who
held that the spiritual is the moral, answered accordingly. He must
show righteousness, and love, and peace in a Holy Spirit. That is the
likeness of God. In proportion as a man has them, he is partaker of a
Divine nature. He can rise no higher, and he needs no more. Platonists
had said--No, that is only virtue; and virtue is the means, not the end.
We want proof of having something above that; something more than any
man of the herd, any Christian slave, can perform; something above
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