| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ursula by Honore de Balzac: which Massin, who was a great friend of the notary and of the sheriff,
began the business of money-lending, and carried matters so briskly
with the peasantry that by the time of which we are now writing Goupil
knew him to hold at least eighty thousand francs on their property.
As to his other niece, the doctor obtained for her husband, through
his influence in Paris, the collectorship of Nemours, and became his
bondsman. Though Minoret-Levrault needed no assistance, Zelie, his
wife, being jealous of the uncle's liberality to his two nieces, took
her ten-year old son to see him, and talked of the expense he would be
to them at a school in Paris, where, she said, education costs so
much. The doctor obtained a half-scholarship for his great-nephew at
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: scoffs at contemporary religious beliefs. Lastly, he is impatient of
hearing from the half-converted Cratylus the doctrine that falsehood can
neither be spoken, nor uttered, nor addressed; a piece of sophistry
attributed to Gorgias, which reappears in the Sophist. And he proceeds to
demolish, with no less delight than he had set up, the Heracleitean theory
of language.
In the latter part of the dialogue Socrates becomes more serious, though he
does not lay aside but rather aggravates his banter of the Heracleiteans,
whom here, as in the Theaetetus, he delights to ridicule. What was the
origin of this enmity we can hardly determine:--was it due to the natural
dislike which may be supposed to exist between the 'patrons of the flux'
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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 Moby Dick by Herman Melville: the softest Turkey--the tongue, which is glued, as it were, to the
floor of the mouth. It is very fat and tender, and apt to tear in
pieces in hoisting it on deck. This particular tongue now before us;
at a passing glance I should say it was a six-barreler; that is, it
will yield you about that amount of oil.
Ere this, you must have plainly seen the truth of what I started
with--that the Sperm Whale and the Right Whale have almost entirely
different heads. To sum up, then: in the Right Whale's there is no
great well of sperm; no ivory teeth at all; no long, slender mandible
of a lower jaw, like the Sperm Whale's. Nor in the Sperm Whale are
there any of those blinds of bone; no huge lower lip; and scarcely
Moby Dick |
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 Magic of Oz by L. Frank Baum: and derisive sound, but it was a laugh nevertheless.
"Good!" said the Kalidah. "Good! Very good! I'm glad you're going
to get the Magic Flower. But what will you do with it?"
"We're going to take it to Ozma, as a present on her birthday."
The Kalidah laughed again; then it became sober. "If you get to the
land on your raft before my people can catch you," it said, "you will
be safe from us. We can swim like ducks, so the girl couldn't have
escaped me by getting into the water; but Kalidahs don't go to that
island over there."
"Why not?" asked Trot.
The beast was silent.
The Magic of Oz |
