| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: religious experiences are like them) plainly show the universe to
be a more many-sided affair than any sect, even the scientific
sect, allows for. What, in the end, are all our verifications
but experiences that agree with more or less isolated systems of
ideas (conceptual systems) that our minds have framed? But why
in the name of common sense need we assume that only one such
system of ideas can be true? The obvious outcome of our total
experience is that the world can be handled according to many
systems of ideas, and is so handled by different men, and will
each time give some characteristic kind of profit, for which he
cares, to the handler, while at the same time some other kind of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from I Have A Dream by Martin Luther King, Jr.: but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose
governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of
interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a
situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to
join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk
together as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted,
every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Message by Honore de Balzac: submitting with the supine listlessness of a dying animal. The
maid could find nothing to say but "There! madame; there,
there----"
"What is the matter with her? What is it, niece?" the old canon
kept on exclaiming.
At last, with the girl's help, I carried Juliette to her room,
gave orders that she was not to be disturbed, and that every one
must be told that the Countess was suffering from a sick
headache. Then we came down to the dining-room, the canon and I.
Some little time had passed since we left the dinner-table; I had
scarcely given a thought to the Count since we left him under the
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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 Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: its effects, and its influence, is enough to cast one into an
ocean of meditations? Are not most words colored by the idea they
represent? Then, to whose genius are they due? If it takes great
intelligence to create a word, how old may human speech be? The
combination of letters, their shapes, and the look they give to
the word, are the exact reflection, in accordance with the
character of each nation, of the unknown beings whose traces
survive in us.
"Who can philosophically explain the transition from sensation to
thought, from thought to word, from the word to its hieroglyphic
presentment, from hieroglyphics to the alphabet, from the alphabet to
Louis Lambert |
