| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: The hindrances that envy and ill-will
Put in my way.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
When anything is done
People see not the patient doing of it,
Nor think how great would be the loss to man
If it had not been done. As in a building
Stone rests on stone, and wanting the foundation
All would be wanting, so in human life
Each action rests on the foregone event,
That made it possible, but is forgotten
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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 Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: chair, ran to it as if to fling it open, but instead of doing so
fell on her knees, with her ear to the keyhole. The two men must
have stopped directly they were through, because she heard plainly
the Chief Inspector's voice, though she could not see his finger
pressed against her husband's breast emphatically.
"You are the other man, Verloc. Two men were seen entering the
park."
And the voice of Mr Verloc said:
"Well, take me now. What's to prevent you? You have the right."
"Oh no! I know too well who you have been giving yourself away to.
He'll have to manage this little affair all by himself. But don't
The Secret Agent |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: little papers will give pleasure to Madame du Tillet."
"Oh, yes," she said, "you are doing her a service, as if you were her
father."
"I am happy, indeed, to be of any good to her-- Come and listen to my
music!" and leaving the papers on the table, he jumped to his piano.
The hands of this angel ran along the yellowing keys, his glance was
rising to heaven, regardless of the roof; already the air of some
blessed climate permeated the room and the soul of the old musician;
but the countess did not allow the artless interpreter of things
celestial to make the strings and the worn wood speak, like
Raffaelle's Saint Cecilia, to the listening angels. She quickly
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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 Republic by Plato: qualities of the individuals who compose them? The Scythians and Thracians
are passionate, our own race intellectual, and the Egyptians and
Phoenicians covetous, because the individual members of each have such and
such a character; the difficulty is to determine whether the several
principles are one or three; whether, that is to say, we reason with one
part of our nature, desire with another, are angry with another, or whether
the whole soul comes into play in each sort of action. This enquiry,
however, requires a very exact definition of terms. The same thing in the
same relation cannot be affected in two opposite ways. But there is no
impossibility in a man standing still, yet moving his arms, or in a top
which is fixed on one spot going round upon its axis. There is no
The Republic |
