| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Deputy of Arcis by Honore de Balzac: house, to see if it were properly sealed.
II
A CONVERSATION BETWEEN ELEVEN O'CLOCK AND MIDNIGHT
As a result of the elections which had just taken place, the ministry,
contrary to expectation, maintained a majority in the Chamber,--a
doubtful and provisional majority which would give it an uncertain and
struggling existence. But, at any rate, it had obtained that merely
numerical success which parties seek at any price to prolong their
power. The Te Deum was sung in all its camps,--a paean which serves as
well to celebrate victorious defeats as honest victories.
On the evening of the day when Colonel Franchessini received the visit
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: "And what is fifty miles of good road? Little more than half a
day's journey. Yes, I call it a very easy distance."
I should never have considered the distance as one of the
ADVANTAGES of the match," cried Elizabeth. "I should never
have said Mrs. Collins was settled NEAR her family."
"It is a proof of your own attachment to Hertfordshire.
Anything beyond the very neighbourhood of Longbourn, I
suppose, would appear far."
As he spoke there was a sort of smile which Elizabeth fancied
she understood; he must be supposing her to be thinking of Jane
and Netherfield, and she blushed as she answered:
Pride and Prejudice |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: react on each individual. So we raise again, in the twentieth
century, the old question of 'the greatest good,' which men
discussed in the Stoa Poikile and the suburban groves of Athens, in
the cool atria of patrician mansions on the Palatine and the
Pincian, in the Museum at Alexandria, and the schools which Omar
Khayyam frequented, in the straw-strewn schools of the Middle Ages
and the opulent chambers of Cosimo dei Medici."
And again:
"The old dream of a co-operative effort to improve life, to bring
happiness to as many minds of mortals as we can reach, shines above
all the mists of the day. Through the ruins of creeds and
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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 Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: whole soul would now have refused it. I wondered that all the
world did not see and comply with this way of salvation, entirely
by the righteousness of Christ."[116]
[116] Edward's and Dwight's Life of Brainerd, New Haven, 1822,
pp. 45-47, abridged.
I have italicized the passage which records the exhaustion of the
anxious emotion hitherto habitual. In a large proportion,
perhaps the majority, of reports, the writers speak as if the
exhaustion of the lower and the entrance of the higher emotion
were simultaneous,[117] yet often again they speak as if the
higher actively drove the lower out. This is undoubtedly true in
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