| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: are there not, who teach music and grammar and other arts for pay, and thus
procure those things of which they stand in need?
ERYXIAS: There are.
SOCRATES: And these men by the arts which they profess, and in exchange
for them, obtain the necessities of life just as we do by means of gold and
silver?
ERYXIAS: True.
SOCRATES: Then if they procure by this means what they want for the
purposes of life, that art will be useful towards life? For do we not say
that silver is useful because it enables us to supply our bodily needs?
ERYXIAS: We do.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: Eugenie's imprisonment, took a certain number of turns up and down the
little garden; he had chosen the hour when Eugenie brushed and
arranged her hair. When the old man reached the walnut-tree he hid
behind its trunk and remained for a few moments watching his
daughter's movements, hesitating, perhaps, between the course to which
the obstinacy of his character impelled him and his natural desire to
embrace his child. Sometimes he sat down on the rotten old bench where
Charles and Eugenie had vowed eternal love; and then she, too, looked
at her father secretly in the mirror before which she stood. If he
rose and continued his walk, she sat down obligingly at the window and
looked at the angle of the wall where the pale flowers hung, where the
Eugenie Grandet |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: relatively slight importance; his interests were elsewhere,
in the world of ideas. His outward life was commonplace and
uninteresting; he was just a hotel-porter, and expected to remain
one while he lived; but meantime, in the realm of thought,
his life was a perpetual adventure. There was so much to know--so
many wonders to be discovered! Never in all his life did Jurgis
forget the day before election, when there came a telephone
message from a friend of Harry Adams, asking him to bring Jurgis
to see him that night; and Jurgis went, and met one of the minds
of the movement.
The invitation was from a man named Fisher, a Chicago millionaire
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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 Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: his arrival, and whom he desired to know, the land-steward of Les
Aigues. He saw a man of medium height, about thirty years of age, with
a sulky look and a discontented face, on which a smile sat ill.
Beneath an anxious brow a pair of greenish eyes evaded the eyes of
others, and so disguised their thought. Sibilet was dressed in a brown
surtout coat, black trousers and waistcoat, and wore his hair long and
flat to the head, which gave him a clerical look. His trousers barely
concealed that he was knock-kneed. Though his pallid complexion and
flabby flesh gave the impression of an unhealthy constitution, Sibilet
was really robust. The tones of his voice, which were a little thick,
harmonized with this unflattering exterior.
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