| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: he had played the air, and then a second time, and a third; when
the military gentleman had tried it once more, and once more
failed; when it became clear to Harker that he, the blushing
debutant, was actually giving a lesson to this full-grown
flutist--and the flutist under his care was not very brilliantly
progressing--how am I to tell what floods of glory brightened the
autumnal countryside; how, unless the reader were an amateur
himself, describe the heights of idiotic vanity to which the
carrier climbed? One significant fact shall paint the situation:
thenceforth it was Harker who played, and the military gentleman
listened and approved.
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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: understand, and you know that I understand the meaning of the sound: this
is what you are saying?
CRATYLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And if when I speak you know my meaning, there is an indication
given by me to you?
CRATYLUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: This indication of my meaning may proceed from unlike as well as
from like, for example in the lamda of sklerotes. But if this is true,
then you have made a convention with yourself, and the correctness of a
name turns out to be convention, since letters which are unlike are
indicative equally with those which are like, if they are sanctioned by
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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 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: suicide; no, she would live out her days in these earthly galleys.
She received d'Arthez as a woman who expected him, and as if he had
already been to see her a hundred times; she did him the honor to
treat him like an old acquaintance, and she put him at his ease by
pointing to a seat on a sofa, while she finished a note she was then
writing. The conversation began in a commonplace manner: the weather,
the ministry, de Marsay's illness, the hopes of the legitimists.
D'Arthez was an absolutist; the princess could not be ignorant of the
opinions of a man who sat in the Chamber among the fifteen or twenty
persons who represented the legitimist party; she found means to tell
him how she had fooled de Marsay to the top of his bent, then, by an
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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 From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne: personally knowing my contradictor, for I would have attempted
to answer him. His objection has its merits, I admit; but I
think we may successfully combat it, as well as all others which
affect the habitability of other worlds. If I were a natural
philosopher, I would tell him that if less of caloric were set
in motion upon the planets which are nearest to the sun, and
more, on the contrary, upon those which are farthest removed
from it, this simple fact would alone suffice to equalize the
heat, and to render the temperature of those worlds supportable
by beings organized like ourselves. If I were a naturalist,
I would tell him that, according to some illustrious men of
From the Earth to the Moon |
