| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: more things than were formerly expressed by it; and it parts into different
senses when the classes of things or ideas which are represented by it are
themselves different and distinct. A figurative use of a word may easily
pass into a new sense: a new meaning caught up by association may become
more important than all the rest. The good or neutral sense of a word,
such as Jesuit, Puritan, Methodist, Heretic, has been often converted into
a bad one by the malevolence of party spirit. Double forms suggest
different meanings and are often used to express them; and the form or
accent of a word has been not unfrequently altered when there is a
difference of meaning. The difference of gender in nouns is utilized for
the same reason. New meanings of words push themselves into the vacant
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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 The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: her. She received every Wednesday, and gave three grand dinners every
month. Her friends felt that she was more at ease in her own house;
where, indeed, her passion for her husband and the care she bestowed
on the education of her children tended to keep her.
Such had been, up to the year 1809, the general course of this
household, which had nothing in common with the ordinary run of
conventional ideas, though the outward life of these two persons,
secretly full of love and joy, was like that of other people.
Balthazar Claes's passion for his wife, which she had known how to
perpetuate, seemed, to use his own expression, to spend its inborn
vigor and fidelity on the cultivation of happiness, which was far
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