| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: and everything of this kind which appertains to other things appertains to
the one.
Certainly, that is true.
Yet once more and for the third time, let us consider: If the one is both
one and many, as we have described, and is neither one nor many, and
participates in time, must it not, in as far as it is one, at times partake
of being, and in as far as it is not one, at times not partake of being?
Certainly.
But can it partake of being when not partaking of being, or not partake of
being when partaking of being?
Impossible.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare: The dire imagination she did follow
This sound of hope doth labour to expel; 976
For now reviving joy bids her rejoice,
And flatters her it is Adonis' voice.
Whereat her tears began to turn their tide,
Being prison'd in her eye, like pearls in glass; 980
Yet sometimes falls an orient drop beside,
Which her cheek melts, as scorning it should pass
To wash the foul face of the sluttish ground,
Who is but drunken when she seemeth drown'd.
O hard-believing love! how strange it seems 985
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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 Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: wrinkles; his speech was gentle, slow, and penetrating. His dress was
that of the priests of Paris, and he allowed himself to wear a brown
frock-coat. No ambition had ever crept into that pure heart, which the
angels would some day carry to God in all its pristine innocence. It
required the gentle firmness of the daughter of Louis XVI. to induce
him to accept a benefice in Paris, humble as it was. As he now entered
the room he glanced with an uneasy eye at the magnificence before him,
smiled at the three delighted people, and shook his gray head.
"My children," he said, "my part in life is not to share in gaieties,
but to visit the afflicted. I came to thank Monsieur Cesar for his
invitation, and to congratulate you. I shall come to only one fete
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
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 Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: nearly black, any one who saw him of a morning, when as he dressed he
exposed the wrinkled, red, and granulated skin of his neck, would have
compared him to a condor,--all the more because his long nose, sharp
at the tip, increased the likeness by its sanguineous color. His head,
partly bald, would have frightened phrenologists by the shape of its
skull, which was like an ass's backbone, an indication of despotic
will. His grayish eyes, half-covered by filmy, red-veined lids, were
predestined to aid hypocrisy. Two scanty locks of hair of an undecided
color overhung the large ears, which were long and without rim, a sure
sign of cruelty, but cruelty of the moral nature only, unless where it
means actual insanity. The mouth, very broad, with thin lips,
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