| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: nor grasp the first abstraction which God delivers to you, and yet you
try to subject His ends to your own tape-line! Suppose that I plunge
you into the abyss of Motion, the force that organizes Number. If I
tell you that the Universe is naught else than Number and Motion, you
would see at once that we speak two different languages. I understand
them both; you understand neither.
"Suppose I add that Motion and Number are engendered by the Word,
namely the supreme Reason of Seers and Prophets who in the olden time
heard the Breath of God beneath which Saul fell to the earth. That
Word, you scoff at it, you men, although you well know that all
visible works, societies, monuments, deeds, passions, proceed from the
Seraphita |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Arizona Nights by Stewart Edward White: Well, we stumbled down the trail and into the hut. At first I
thought it was empty, but after a minute I saw a very old man
crouched in a corner. As I looked at him he raised his bleared
eyes to me, his head swinging slowly from side to side as though
with a kind of palsy. He could not see me, that was evident, nor
hear me, but some instinct not yet decayed turned him toward a
new presence in the room. In my wild desire for water I found
room to think that here was a man even worse off than myself.
A vessel of water was in the corner. I drank it. It was more
than I could hold, but I drank even after I was filled, and the
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