| 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: Place du Palais-de-Justice, and the executioner branded him with a
red-hot iron. Then came the last scene of all; among some sixty
convicts in the prison yard of the Bicetre, he was awaiting his turn
to have the irons riveted on his limbs.
"Dear me! I cannot laugh any more! . . ." said Aquilina. "You are very
solemn, dear boy; what can be the matter? The gentleman has gone."
"A word with you, Castanier," said Melmoth when the piece was at an
end, and the attendant was fastening Mme. de la Garde's cloak.
The corridor was crowded, and escape impossible.
"Very well, what is it?"
"No human power can hinder you from taking Aquilina home, and going
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: physicians, any more than we can become carpenters or anything of that
sort; and he who by doing ill cannot become a physician at all, clearly
cannot become a bad physician. In like manner the good may become
deteriorated by time, or toil, or disease, or other accident (the only real
doing ill is to be deprived of knowledge), but the bad man will never
become bad, for he is always bad; and if he were to become bad, he must
previously have been good. Thus the words of the poem tend to show that on
the one hand a man cannot be continuously good, but that he may become good
and may also become bad; and again that
'They are the best for the longest time whom the gods love.'
All this relates to Pittacus, as is further proved by the sequel. For he
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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 War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: explanation of historic events in the will of one man; he is as
right as the Russian historians who maintain that Napoleon was drawn
to Moscow by the skill of the Russian commanders. Here besides the law
of retrospection, which regards all the past as a preparation for
events that subsequently occur, the law of reciprocity comes in,
confusing the whole matter. A good chessplayer having lost a game is
sincerely convinced that his loss resulted from a mistake he made
and looks for that mistake in the opening, but forgets that at each
stage of the game there were similar mistakes and that none of his
moves were perfect. He only notices the mistake to which he pays
attention, because his opponent took advantage of it. How much more
War and Peace |
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 Love and Friendship by Jane Austen: Fish of Southampton? I who am doomed to waste my Days of Youth
and Beauty in an humble Cottage in the Vale of Uske."
Ah! little did I then think I was ordained so soon to quit that
humble Cottage for the Deceitfull Pleasures of the World.
Adeiu
Laura.
LETTER 5th
LAURA to MARIANNE
One Evening in December as my Father, my Mother and myself, were
arranged in social converse round our Fireside, we were on a
sudden greatly astonished, by hearing a violent knocking on the
Love and Friendship |
