| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: sort of spirit which will not shrink from groveling before any
creature that may be of use to him, and the cunning to be insolent
when he needs a man no longer. Like one of the grotesque figures in
the ballet in Gustave, he was a marquis behind, a boor in front. And
this high-priest of commerce had a following.
Emile Blondet, Journalist, with abundance of intellectual power,
reckless, brilliant, and indolent, could do anything that he chose,
yet he submitted to be exploited with his eyes open. Treacherous or
kind upon impulse, a man to love, but not to respect; quick-witted as
a soubrette, unable to refuse his pen to any one that asked, or his
heart to the first that would borrow it, Emile was the most
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: imperfection was in him, and that none of the rest was awanting. Thus I
perceived that doubt, inconstancy, sadness, and such like, could not be
found in God, since I myself would have been happy to be free from them.
Besides, I had ideas of many sensible and corporeal things; for although I
might suppose that I was dreaming, and that all which I saw or imagined
was false, I could not, nevertheless, deny that the ideas were in reality
in my thoughts. But, because I had already very clearly recognized in
myself that the intelligent nature is distinct from the corporeal, and as
I observed that all composition is an evidence of dependency, and that a
state of dependency is manifestly a state of imperfection, I therefore
determined that it could not be a perfection in God to be compounded of
Reason Discourse |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: course unlike anything in mind-cure thought, but the purely
spiritual part of the exercise is identical in both communions,
and in both communions those who urge it write with authority,
for they have evidently experienced in their own persons that
whereof they tell. Compare again some mind-cure utterances:--
"High, healthful, pure thinking can be encouraged, promoted, and
strengthened. Its current can be turned upon grand ideals until
it forms a habit and wears a channel. By means of such
discipline the mental horizon can be flooded with the sunshine of
beauty, wholeness, and harmony. To inaugurate pure and lofty
thinking may at first seem difficult, even almost mechanical, but
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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 A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: consequences of her crime fearlessly. Burke and Hare were a
couple of ruffians, tempted by what must have seemed almost
fabulous wealth to men of their wretched poverty to commit a
series of cruel murders. Hare, with his queer, Mephistophelian
countenance, was the wickeder of the two. Burke became haunted
as time went on and flew to drink to banish horror, but Hare
would seem to have been free from such "compunctious visitings of
Nature." He kept his head and turned King's evidence.
In the case of the Peltzer brothers we have a man who is of good
social position, falling desperately in love with the wife of a
successful barrister. The wife, though unhappy in her domestic
A Book of Remarkable Criminals |
