| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: air circulate round the head of the poor saint, who was suffocating in
that thick atmosphere. Look how the drapery now floats, and you see
that the breeze lifts it; just now it looked like heavy linen held out
by pins. Observe that the satiny lustre I am putting on the bosom
gives it the plump suppleness of the flesh of a young girl. See how
this tone of mingled reddish-brown and ochre warms up the cold
grayness of that large shadow where the blood seemed to stagnate
rather than flow. Young man, young man! what I am showing you now no
other master in the world can teach you. Mabuse alone knew the secret
of giving life to form. Mabuse had but one pupil, and I am he. I never
took a pupil, and I am an old man now. You are intelligent enough to
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells: gutted houses and blasted and blackened trees that the night
had hidden stood out now gaunt and terrible in the pitiless
light of dawn. Yet here and there some object had had the
luck to escape--a white railway signal here, the end of a
greenhouse there, white and fresh amid the wreckage. Never
before in the history of warfare had destruction been so
indiscriminate and so universal. And shining with the growing
light of the east, three of the metallic giants stood about
the pit, their cowls rotating as though they were surveying
the desolation they had made.
It seemed to me that the pit had been enlarged, and ever
War of the Worlds |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: and the lives and property of the leaders of the Rebellion were forfeited.
In reconstructing the institutions of these shattered and overthrown States,
Congress should begin with a clean slate, and make clean work of it.
Let there be no hesitation. It would be a cowardly deference
to a defeated and treacherous President, if any account were made of
the illegitimate, one-sided, sham governments hurried into existence
for a malign purpose in the absence of Congress. These pretended governments,
which were never submitted to the people, and from participation in which
four millions of the loyal people were excluded by Presidential order,
should now be treated according to their true character, as shams
and impositions, and supplanted by true and legitimate governments,
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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 Protagoras by Plato: the evil-doer under the notion, or for the reason, that he has done wrong,
--only the unreasonable fury of a beast acts in that manner. But he who
desires to inflict rational punishment does not retaliate for a past wrong
which cannot be undone; he has regard to the future, and is desirous that
the man who is punished, and he who sees him punished, may be deterred from
doing wrong again. He punishes for the sake of prevention, thereby clearly
implying that virtue is capable of being taught. This is the notion of all
who retaliate upon others either privately or publicly. And the Athenians,
too, your own citizens, like other men, punish and take vengeance on all
whom they regard as evil doers; and hence, we may infer them to be of the
number of those who think that virtue may be acquired and taught. Thus
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