| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: the handsomest young fellows in Paris. I had youth and good looks, two
advantages due to good fortune, but of which we are all as proud as of
a conquest. I must be silent as to the rest.--Like all youths, I was
in love with a woman six years older than myself. No one of you here,"
said he, looking carefully round the table, "can suspect her name or
recognize her. Ronquerolles alone, at the time, ever guessed my
secret. He had kept it well, but I should have feared his smile.
However, he is gone," said the Minister, looking round.
"He would not stay to supper," said Madame de Nucingen.
"For six months, possessed by my passion," de Marsay went on, "but
incapable of suspecting that it had overmastered me, I had abandoned
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Where There's A Will by Mary Roberts Rinehart: hand--oh, I'm not very keen, but I saw that."
"The remedy for that is very, simple," she replied coolly. "You
needn't touch my hand."
"Stop!" I snapped. "Just stop before you say something you'll be
sorry for. Of course, you hate each other. It beats me, anyhow,
why two people who get married always want to get away by
themselves until they're so sick of each other that they don't
get over it the rest of their lives. The only sensible honeymoon
I ever heard of was when one of the chambermaids here married a
farmer in the neighborhood. It was harvest and he couldn't
leave, so she went ALONE to see her folks and she said it beat
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche: And that they are on the way to me?
Do speak unto me of my gardens, of my Happy Isles, of my new beautiful
race--why do ye not speak unto me thereof?
This guests'-present do I solicit of your love, that ye speak unto me of my
children. For them am I rich, for them I became poor: what have I not
surrendered,
--What would I not surrender that I might have one thing: THESE children,
THIS living plantation, THESE life-trees of my will and of my highest
hope!"
Thus spake Zarathustra, and stopped suddenly in his discourse: for his
longing came over him, and he closed his eyes and his mouth, because of the
Thus Spake Zarathustra |
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: abstract way of conceiving things as good. Every abstract way of
conceiving things selects some one aspect of them as their
essence for the time being, and disregards the other aspects.
Systematic healthy-mindedness, conceiving good as the essential
and universal aspect of being, deliberately excludes evil from
its field of vision; and although, when thus nakedly stated, this
might seem a difficult feat to perform for one who is
intellectually sincere with himself and honest about facts, a
little reflection shows that the situation is too complex to lie
open to so simple a criticism.
In the first place, happiness, like every other emotional state,
|
