| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: ignorance of the community, and to elevate it to the dignity of
physical force. But Wisdom has always been hidden from it.
Considered as an instrument of thought, the English mind is coarse
and undeveloped. The only thing that can purify it is the growth
of the critical instinct.
It is Criticism, again, that, by concentration, makes culture
possible. It takes the cumbersome mass of creative work, and
distils it into a finer essence. Who that desires to retain any
sense of form could struggle through the monstrous multitudinous
books that the world has produced, books in which thought stammers
or ignorance brawls? The thread that is to guide us across the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Eve and David by Honore de Balzac: his head to get rid of the document. Baron Goertz was, in fact,
accused of this, and the secretary owned that he had eaten the treaty.
He was tried and convicted and condemned to death.--But you have not
come to that yet, so take a cigar and smoke till we reach the
caleche."
Lucien took a cigar and lit it, Spanish fashion, at the priest's
cigar. "He is right," he thought; "I can take my life at any time."
"It often happens that a young man's fortunes take a turn when despair
is darkest," the Spaniard continued. "That is what I wished to tell
you, but I preferred to prove it by a case in point. Here was the
handsome young secretary lying under sentence of death, and his case
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