| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: not only in French and Latin, but in Greek, Hebrew, and even
Chaldee.
So lived and so died a noble man; more noble, to my mind, than many
a victorious warrior, or successful statesman, or canonised saint.
To know facts, and to heal diseases, were the two objects of his
life. For them he toiled, as few men have toiled; and he died in
harness, at his work--the best death any man can die.
VESALIUS THE ANATOMIST {9}
I cannot begin a sketch of the life of this great man better than by
trying to describe a scene so picturesque, so tragic in the eyes of
those who are wont to mourn over human follies, so comic in the eyes
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: tastes were noble; that his ruling passion was to keep
himself unspotted from the world; and that his luxuries were
all of the same healthy order as cold tubs and early rising.
But a man may be both coldly cruel in the pursuit of
goodness, and morbid even in the pursuit of health. I cannot
lay my hands on the passage in which he explains his
abstinence from tea and coffee, but I am sure I have the
meaning correctly. It is this; He thought it bad economy and
worthy of no true virtuoso to spoil the natural rapture of
the morning with such muddy stimulants; let him but see the
sun rise, and he was already sufficiently inspirited for the
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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 Desert Gold by Zane Grey: emotions that had been stirred into being with all their incalculable
power for spiritual change, had rendered different the meaning of
life. In the moment almost of their realization the desert had
claimed Gale, and had drawn him into its crucible. The desert
had multiplied weeks into years. Heat, thirst, hunger, loneliness,
toil, fear, ferocity, pain--he knew them all. He had felt them
all--the white sun, with its glazed, coalescing, lurid fire; the
caked split lips and rasping, dry-puffed tongue; the sickening
ache in the pit of his stomach; the insupportable silence, the
empty space, the utter desolation, the contempt of life; the weary
ride, the long climb, the plod in sand, the search, search, search
Desert Gold |
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 Adieu by Honore de Balzac: de Vandieres from Moscow to Studzianka. The horses, too, were like
those he had gone, at the peril of his life, to fetch from the Russian
outposts. He himself wore the soiled fantastic clothing, the same
weapons, as on the 29th of November, 1812. He had let his beard grow,
also his hair, which was tangled and matted, and his face was
neglected, so that nothing might be wanting to represent the awful
truth.
"I can guess your purpose," cried Monsieur Fanjat, when he saw the
colonel getting out of the carriage. "If you want to succeed, do not
let my niece see you in that equipage. To-night I will give her opium.
During her sleep, we will dress her as she was at Studzianka, and
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