| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Whirligigs by O. Henry: complacency of the successful trifler.
"Now," continued the visitor, "suppose this Mrs.
Billings wasn't happy at home? We'll say she and her
husband didn't gee worth a cent. They've got incom-
patibility to burn. The things she likes, Billings wouldn't
have as a gift with trading-stamps. It's Tabby and
Rover with them all the time. She's an educated woman
in science and culture, and she reads things out loud at
meetings. Billings is not on. He don't appreciate pro-
gress and obelisks and ethics, and things of that sort. Old
Billings is simply a blink when it comes to such things.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: The Gondreville Mystery
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Guenic, Gaudebert-Calyste-Charles, Baron du
Beatrix
Hulot (Marshal)
The Muse of the Department
Cousin Betty
La Billardiere, Athanase-Jean-Francois-Michel, Baron Flamet de
Cesar Birotteau
The Government Clerks
Leroi, Pierre
The Chouans |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: conflicting elements and makes them friends. Every art, gymnastic and
husbandry as well as medicine, is the reconciliation of opposites; and this
is what Heracleitus meant, when he spoke of a harmony of opposites: but in
strictness he should rather have spoken of a harmony which succeeds
opposites, for an agreement of disagreements there cannot be. Music too is
concerned with the principles of love in their application to harmony and
rhythm. In the abstract, all is simple, and we are not troubled with the
twofold love; but when they are applied in education with their
accompaniments of song and metre, then the discord begins. Then the old
tale has to be repeated of fair Urania and the coarse Polyhymnia, who must
be indulged sparingly, just as in my own art of medicine care must be taken
|
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 Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: year of his age, no less than four thousand five hundred and fifty
different theses, upon the most abstruse points of the most abstruse
theology;--and to defend and maintain them in such sort, as to cramp and
dumbfound his opponents.--What is that, cried my father, to what is told us
of Alphonsus Tostatus, who, almost in his nurse's arms, learned all the
sciences and liberal arts without being taught any one of them?--What shall
we say of the great Piereskius?--That's the very man, cried my uncle Toby,
I once told you of, brother Shandy, who walked a matter of five hundred
miles, reckoning from Paris to Shevling, and from Shevling back again,
merely to see Stevinus's flying chariot.--He was a very great man! added my
uncle Toby (meaning Stevinus)--He was so, brother Toby, said my father
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