| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: at the furthest end of the palace,
and when I am carried up there
none can hear my voice. Each time
I see my wife she shows me the
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poison I had prepared for her and
her lover. I crave it for myself, but
she will not let me die; she gives
me bread, and I eat it.
"I have done well to eat and live;
I had not reckoned on robbers!"
The Muse of the Department |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: of a true insight into the character of God. And that idea alone,
believe me, will give conquering might either to creed, philosophy, or
heart of man. Each will be strong, each will endure, in proportion as
it believes that God is one who shows to man the thing which he knew
not: as it believes, in short, in that Logos of which Saint John wrote,
that He was the light who lightens every man who comes into the world.
In a word, the wild Koreish had discovered, more or less clearly, that
end and object of all metaphysic whereof I have already spoken so often;
that external and imperishable beauty for which Plato sought of old; and
had seen that its name was righteousness, and that it dwelt absolutely
in an absolutely righteous person; and moreover, that this person was no
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