| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: but declared that, for the last ten years, he had wholly and
decidedly renounced women. He could no longer please, he said;
he did not add: "I am too old," but: "I am too poor." He said:
"If I were not ruined--Heee!" All he had left, in fact, was an
income of about fifteen thousand francs. His dream was to come
into an inheritance and to have a hundred thousand livres income
for mistresses. He did not belong, as the reader will perceive,
to that puny variety of octogenaries who, like M. de Voltaire,
have been dying all their life; his was no longevity of a cracked pot;
this jovial old man had always had good health. He was superficial,
rapid, easily angered. He flew into a passion at everything,
Les Miserables |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: and continue this conversation at my house, any day you may
be willing to see an adversary capable of understanding and
anxious to refute you, and I will show you my father, M.
Noirtier de Villefort, one of the most fiery Jacobins of the
French Revolution; that is to say, he had the most
remarkable audacity, seconded by a most powerful
organization -- a man who has not, perhaps, like yourself
seen all the kingdoms of the earth, but who has helped to
overturn one of the greatest; in fact, a man who believed
himself, like you, one of the envoys, not of God, but of a
supreme being; not of providence, but of fate. Well, sir,
The Count of Monte Cristo |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Dreams by Olive Schreiner: to him; but it never came.
And the years rolled on; he counted them by the steps he had cut--a few for
a year--only a few. He sang no more; he said no more, "I will do this or
that"--he only worked. And at night, when the twilight settled down, there
looked out at him from the holes and crevices in the rocks strange wild
faces.
"Stop your work, you lonely man, and speak to us," they cried.
"My salvation is in work, if I should stop but for one moment you would
creep down upon me," he replied. And they put out their long necks
further.
"Look down into the crevice at your feet," they said. "See what lie there-
|
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 Forged Coupon by Leo Tolstoy: and Tolstoy henceforward wandered solitary in
spirit through a wilderness of thought, seeking
rest and finding none, coming perilously near to
suicide before he reached haven.
To many it will seem that the finest outcome
of that period of mental groping, internal strug-
gle, and contending with current ideas, lies in the
above-mentioned "What then must we do?"
Certain it is that no human document ever re-
vealed the soul of its author with greater sincer-
ity. Not for its practical suggestions, but for its
The Forged Coupon |
