| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: Everybody lived for himself only, for his pleasure, and all the
talk concerning God and righteousness was deception. And if
sometimes doubts arose in her mind and she wondered why
everything was so ill-arranged in the world that all hurt each
other, and made each other suffer, she thought it best not to
dwell on it, and if she felt melancholy she could smoke, or,
better still, drink, and it would pass.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
SUNDAY IN PRISON--PREPARING FOR MASS.
On Sunday morning at five o'clock, when a whistle sounded in the
corridor of the women's ward of the prison, Korableva, who was
Resurrection |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: time! We never love men who pretend to teach us; they rub up all our
little vanities."
"And that wretched boy who hanged himself?"
"Lucien? An Antinous and a great poet. I worshiped him in all
conscience, and I might have been happy. But he was in love with a
girl of the town; and I gave him up to Madame. de Serizy. . . . If he
had cared to love me, should I have given him up?"
"What an odd thing, that you should come into collision with an Esther!"
"She was handsomer than I," said the Princess.--"Very soon it shall be
three years that I have lived in solitude," she resumed, after a
pause, "and this tranquillity has nothing painful to me about it. To
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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 Lesser Hippias by Plato: in the agora at the tables of the money-changers, when you were setting
forth the great and enviable stores of your wisdom; and you said that upon
one occasion, when you went to the Olympic games, all that you had on your
person was made by yourself. You began with your ring, which was of your
own workmanship, and you said that you could engrave rings; and you had
another seal which was also of your own workmanship, and a strigil and an
oil flask, which you had made yourself; you said also that you had made the
shoes which you had on your feet, and the cloak and the short tunic; but
what appeared to us all most extraordinary and a proof of singular art, was
the girdle of your tunic, which, you said, was as fine as the most costly
Persian fabric, and of your own weaving; moreover, you told us that you had
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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 Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: strange to you, if you will consider it? (The reading is here uncertain.)
ALCIBIADES: What is that, Socrates?
SOCRATES: It may be, in short, that the possession of all the sciences, if
unaccompanied by the knowledge of the best, will more often than not injure
the possessor. Consider the matter thus:--Must we not, when we intend
either to do or say anything, suppose that we know or ought to know that
which we propose so confidently to do or say?
ALCIBIADES: Yes, in my opinion.
SOCRATES: We may take the orators for an example, who from time to time
advise us about war and peace, or the building of walls and the
construction of harbours, whether they understand the business in hand, or
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