| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: is evaporated, where their vitality is exhausted, and their wills
enfeebled. Government offices are part of a great scheme for the
manufacture of the mediocrity necessary for the maintenance of a
Feudal System on a pecuniary basis--and money is the foundation of the
Social Contract. (See Les Employes.) The mephitic vapors in the
atmosphere of a crowded room contribute in no small degree to bring
about a gradual deterioration of intelligences, the brain that gives
off the largest quantity of nitrogen asphyxiates the others, in the
long run.
The cashier was a man of five-and-forty or thereabouts. As he sat at
the table, the light from a moderator lamp shining full on his bald
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: Do change the nature of the thing produced,
And are thereafter nothing like to fire
Nor whatso else has power to send its bodies
With impact touching on the senses' touch.
Again, to say that all things are but fire
And no true thing in number of all things
Exists but fire, as this same fellow says,
Seems crazed folly. For the man himself
Against the senses by the senses fights,
And hews at that through which is all belief,
Through which indeed unto himself is known
Of The Nature of Things |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: against all woes; she worked with unfaltering hand beside her dying
son, performed her household duties with marvellous activity, and
sufficed for all. She was even happy, still, when she saw on Luigi's
lips a smile of surprise at the cleanliness she produced in the one
poor room where they had taken refuge.
"Dear, I kept this bit of bread for you," she said, one evening, when
he returned, worn-out.
"And you?"
"I? I have dined, dear Luigi; I want nothing more."
And the tender look on her beseeching face urged him more than her
words to take the food of which she had deprived herself.
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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 The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: fulfilment of the day. So it is when men dwell in the open
air; it is one of the simple pleasures that we lose by living
cribbed and covered in a house, that, though the coming of
the day is still the most inspiriting, yet day's departure,
also, and the return of night refresh, renew, and quiet us;
and in the pastures of the dusk we stand, like cattle,
exulting in the absence of the load.
Our nights wore never cold, and they were always still, but
for one remarkable exception. Regularly, about nine o'clock,
a warm wind sprang up, and blew for ten minutes, or maybe a
quarter of an hour, right down the canyon, fanning it well
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