| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: conventions. If I had a daughter able to become a Madame de Stael
I should wish her dead at fifteen. Can you imagine a daughter of
yours flaunting on the stage of fame, exhibiting herself to win
the plaudits of a crowd, and not suffer anguish at the thought? No
matter to what heights a woman can rise by the inward poetry of
her soul, she must sacrifice the outer signs of superiority on the
altar of her home. Her impulse, her genius, her aspirations toward
Good, the whole poem of a young girl's being, should belong to the
man she accepts and the children whom she brings into the world. I
think I perceive in you a secret desire to widen the narrow circle
of the life to which all women are condemned, and to put love and
Modeste Mignon |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: he can live on equal terms with his lead soldiery, and go a
cruise in his own toy schooner? Surely all these are
practical questions to a neophyte entering upon life with a
view to play. Precision upon such a point, the child can
understand. But if you merely ask him of his past behaviour,
as to who threw such a stone, for instance, or struck such and
such a match; or whether he had looked into a parcel or gone
by a forbidden path, - why, he can see no moment in the
inquiry, and it is ten to one, he has already half forgotten
and half bemused himself with subsequent imaginings.
It would be easy to leave them in their native cloudland,
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