| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: ERASISTRATUS: By choosing as I said.
SOCRATES: And he appears to you to be the richest who has goods of the
greatest value?
ERASISTRATUS: He does.
SOCRATES: And are not the healthy richer than the sick, since health is a
possession more valuable than riches to the sick? Surely there is no one
who would not prefer to be poor and well, rather than to have all the King
of Persia's wealth and to be ill. And this proves that men set health
above wealth, else they would never choose the one in preference to the
other.
ERASISTRATUS: True.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare: 'Once,' quoth she, 'did I see a fair sweet youth
Here in these brakes deep-wounded with a boar,
Deep in the thigh, a spectacle of ruth!
See, in my thigh,' quoth she, 'here was the sore.
She showed hers: he saw more wounds than one,
And blushing fled, and left her all alone.
X.
Sweet rose, fair flower, untimely pluck'd, soon vaded,
Pluck'd in the bud, and vaded in the spring!
Bright orient pearl, alack, too timely shaded!
Fair creature, kill'd too soon by death's sharp sting!
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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 Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: speeches and understand the whole Charter, or most of it. Though he
loved the Bourbons with noble frankness, believed in God as a
gentleman should, and read nothing but the "Quotidienne," he was not
as ridiculous as the liberals of his department would fain have had
him. He could hold his own in the court circle, provided no one talked
to him of "Moses in Egypt," nor of the drama, or romanticism, or local
color, nor of railways. He himself had never got beyond Monsieur de
Voltaire, Monsieur le Comte de Buffon, Payronnet, and the Chevalier
Gluck, the Queen's favorite musician.
"Madame," he said to the Marquise de Listomere, who was on his arm as
they entered Madame Firmiani's salons, "if this woman is my nephew's
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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 Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: love. I should think this lady might very fairly ask to be
delivered from love of such a nature. For if I, a stranger, had
been one-tenth part so gross and so discourteous, you would most
righteously have broke my head. It would have been in your part, as
lover, to protect her from such insolence. Protect her first, then,
from yourself.'
'Ay,' quoth Mr. Gottesheim, who had been looking on with his hands
behind his tall old back, 'ay, that's Scripture truth.'
Fritz was staggered, not only by the Prince's imperturbable
superiority of manner, but by a glimmering consciousness that he
himself was in the wrong. The appeal to liberal doctrines had,
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