| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: [A loud alarum. Enter CLIFFORD, wounded.]
CLIFFORD.
Here burns my candle out; ay, here it dies,
Which whiles it lasted gave King Henry light.
O Lancaster! I fear thy overthrow
More than my body's parting with my soul!
My love and fear glued many friends to thee;
And, now I fall, thy tough commixtures melt,
Impairing Henry, strengthening mis-proud York.
The common people swarm like summer flies;
And whither fly the gnats but to the sun?
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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 The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: pointing to their efforts everywhere in ruins. He cried upon the manes
of Tyre, Carthage, and Babylon; he called upon Babel and Jerusalem to
appear; and sought, without finding them, the transient furrows made
by the ploughshare of civilization. Humanity floated on the surface of
the earth as a ship whose wake is lost in the calm level of ocean.
These were the fundamental notions set forth in Doctor Sigier's
address, all wrapped in the mystical language and strange school Latin
of the time. He had made a special study of the Scriptures, and they
supplied him with the weapons with which he came before his
contemporaries to hasten their progress. He hid his boldness under his
immense learning, as with a cloak, and his philosophical bent under a
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