| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: shrank back from one coarse fact; that in birth and habit the
man Christ was thrown up from the lowest of the people: his
flesh, their flesh; their blood, his blood; tempted like them,
to brutalize day by day; to lie, to steal: the actual slime and
want of their hourly life, and the wine-press he trod alone.
Yet, is there no meaning in this perpetually covered truth? If
the son of the carpenter had stood in the church that night, as
he stood with the fishermen and harlots by the sea of Galilee,
before His Father and their Father, despised and rejected of
men, without a place to lay His head, wounded for their
iniquities, bruised for their transgressions, would not that
Life in the Iron-Mills |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: and assembling the greater part of the satraps and officers,
consulted when and how to cut him off. When they had unanimously
agreed, first to use his service in the next battle, and then to
take an occasion to destroy him, Eudamus, the master of the
elephants, and Phaedimus, gave Eumenes private advice of this
design, not out of kindness or good-will to him, but lest they
should lose the money they had lent him. Eumenes, having
commended them, retired to his tent, and telling his friends he
lived among a herd of wild beasts, made his will, and tore up all
his letters, lest his correspondents after his death should be
questioned or punished on account of anything in his secret
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: loosen the buckle of the strap that you may fall and crack your
skull; one wrenches off your horse's shoes, another steals your
whip, and the least treacherous of them all is the man whom you
see coming to fire his pistol at you point blank.
"You yourself, my dear boy, are clever enough to make
acquaintance before long with the odious and incessant warfare
waged by mediocrity against the superior man. If you should drop
five-and-twenty louis one day, you will be accused of gambling on
the next, and your best friends will report that you have lost
twenty-five thousand. If you have a headache, you will be
considered mad. If you are a little hasty, no one can live with
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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 Salome by Oscar Wilde: Aux ambassadeurs de Cesar il faut faire tout honneur.
HERODIAS. Ce n'est pas e cause d'eux que vous restez.
HERODE. Oui, l'air est delicieux. Viens, Herodias, nos hotes nous
attendent. Ah! j'ai glisse! j'ai glisse dans le sang! C'est d'un
mauvais presage. C'est d'un tres mauvais presage. Pourquoi y a-t-
il du sang ici? . . . Et ce cadavre? Que fait ici ce cadavre?
Pensez-vous que je sois comme le roi d'Egypte qui ne donne jamais un
festin sans montrer un cadavre e ses hotes? Enfin, qui est-ce? Je
ne veux pas le regarder.
PREMIER SOLDAT. C'est notre capitaine, Seigneur. C'est le jeune
Syrien que vous avez fait capitaine il y a trois jours seulement.
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