| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: wretchedly calculating that, even when he had resigned from the
club, and knocked off his cigars, and given up his Sundays out of
town, he would still be no nearer attainment.
The Spectator had slipped to his feet and as he picked it up his
eye fell again on the paragraph addressed to the friends of Mrs.
Aubyn. He had read it for the first time with a scarcely
perceptible quickening of attention: her name had so long been
public property that his eye passed it unseeingly, as the crowd in
the street hurries without a glance by some familiar monument.
"Information concerning the period previous to her coming to
England. . . ." The words were an evocation. He saw her again as
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Apology by Xenophon: dia touto ekalei men Eurulokhos o Kharistios, ekalei de Skopas k
Kranonios, oukh ekista lontes, upiskhnoumenoi}. Cf. Diog. Laert.
ii. 31, {Kharmidou oiketas auto didontos, in' ap' auton
prosodeuoito, oukh eileto}. Cf. id. 65, 74.
[35] See "Hell." II. ii. 10.
[36] {oikteirein eautous}. See L. Dind. ad loc. For an incident in
point see "Mem." II. vii.
[37] Plat. "Rep." iii. 404 D, "refinements of Attic confectionery."
[38] {ek tes psukhes}, possibly "by a healthy appetite." Cf. "Symp."
iv. 41. The same sentiment "ex ore Antisthenis." See Joel, op.
cit. i. 382; Schanz, Plat. "Apol." p. 88, S. 26.
The Apology |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: belief in the goodness of heart which soldiers hid, he thought,
beneath a brutal exterior. Joseph did not yet know, poor boy, that
soldiers of genius are as gentle and courteous in manner as other
superior men in any walk of life. All genius is alike, wherever found.
"Poor boy!" said Philippe to his mother, "we mustn't plague him; let
him do as he likes."
To his mother's eyes the colonel's contempt was a mark of fraternal
affection.
"Philippe will always love and protect his brother," she thought to
herself.
CHAPTER III
|
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 Walden by Henry David Thoreau: Netherland, writing in Dutch, in 1650, for the information of those
who wished to take up land there, states more particularly that
"those in New Netherland, and especially in New England, who have no
means to build farmhouses at first according to their wishes, dig a
square pit in the ground, cellar fashion, six or seven feet deep, as
long and as broad as they think proper, case the earth inside with
wood all round the wall, and line the wood with the bark of trees or
something else to prevent the caving in of the earth; floor this
cellar with plank, and wainscot it overhead for a ceiling, raise a
roof of spars clear up, and cover the spars with bark or green sods,
so that they can live dry and warm in these houses with their entire
Walden |
