| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: man to clutch the infinite, which for ever slips through his
ineffectual grasp, this last tourney of thought against thought, was a
task worthy of an assembly where the most stupendous human imagination
ever known, perhaps, at that moment shone.
The Doctor began by summing up in a mild and even tone the principal
points he had so far established:
"No intellect was the exact counterpart of another. Had man any right
to require an account of his Creator for the inequality of powers
bestowed on each? Without attempting to penetrate rashly into the
designs of God, ought we not to recognize the fact that by reason of
their general diversity intelligences could be classed in spheres?
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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 Tin Woodman of Oz by L. Frank Baum: farmhouse was far behind them and only grass covered
the vast expanse of plain. So in his fright he let go
of Polychrome's hand and put the hand of the Tin
Soldier in that of the Rainbow's Daughter. Then he
slipped back of the line and went to the other end,
where he silently seized the Tin Woodman's hand.
Meantime, the beast had smelled the Tin Soldier and
found he was the last of the line.
"That's funny!" growled the Hip-po-gy-raf; "I can
smell straw, but I can't find it. Well, it's here,
somewhere, and I must hunt around until I do find it,
The Tin Woodman of Oz |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: offered them the shelter of his roof; and in his house, two months
later, the Baron died, worn out with grief. The Nouastres came of the
best blood in the province; Mlle. de Nouastre was a girl of two-and-
twenty; the Marquis d'Esgrignon married her to continue his line. But
she died in childbirth, a victim to the unskilfulness of her
physician, leaving, most fortunately, a son to bear the name of the
d'Esgrignons. The old Marquis--he was but fifty-three, but adversity
and sharp distress had added months to every year--the poor old
Marquis saw the death of the loveliest of human creatures, a noble
woman in whom the charm of the feminine figures of the sixteenth
century lived again, a charm now lost save to men's imaginations. With
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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 Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: Yet by their meetings and their unions all,
Naught would result, indeed, besides a throng
And hurly-burly all of living things-
Precisely as men, and cattle, and wild beasts,
By mere conglomeration each with each
Can still beget not anything of new.
But if by chance they lose, inside a body,
Their own sense and another sense take on,
What, then, avails it to assign them that
Which is withdrawn thereafter? And besides,
To touch on proof that we pronounced before,
Of The Nature of Things |
