| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: which a man does not deliberate," said my former guardian, who thought
to enlighten the assembly with a flash of inebriety.
"Yes!" said the secretary of an embassy.
"Yes!" said the priest.
But the two men did not mean the same thing.
A "doctrinaire," who had missed his election to the Chamber by one
hundred and fifty votes out of one hundred and fifty-five, here rose.
"Messieurs," he said, "this phenomenal incident of intellectual nature
is one of those which stand out vividly from the normal condition to
which sobriety is subjected. Consequently the decision to be made
ought to be the spontaneous act of our consciences, a sudden
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Camille by Alexandre Dumas: live on. I did not tell Marguerite what I had done, certain as I
was that she would refuse the gift. This income came from a
mortgage of sixty thousand francs on a house that I had never
even seen. All that I knew was that every three months my
father's solicitor, an old friend of the family, handed over to
me seven hundred and fifty francs in return for my receipt.
The day when Marguerite and I came to Paris to look for a flat, I
went to this solicitor and asked him what had to be done in order
to make over this income to another person. The good man imagined
I was ruined, and questioned me as to the cause of my decision.
As I knew that I should be obliged, sooner or later, to say in
Camille |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott: He gave them to udnerstand, in a short and pity speech, that the
gate of the castle was never on any account opened during meal-
times; that his honour, the Master of Ravenswood, and some guests
of quality, had just sat down to dinner; that there was excellent
brandy at the hostler-wife's at Wolf's Hope down below; and he
held out some obscure hint that the reckoning would be
discharged by the Master; but this was uttered in a very dubious
and oracular strain, for, like Louis XIV., Caleb Balderstone
hesitated to carry finesse so far as direct falsehood, and was
content to deceive, if possible, without directly lying.
This annunciation was received with surprise by some, with
The Bride of Lammermoor |
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 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: "Undoubtedly," it will be said, "religious, moral, philosophical
and juridical ideas have been modified in the course of
historical development. But religion, morality philosophy,
political science, and law, constantly survived this change."
"There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice,
etc. that are common to all states of society. But Communism
abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all
morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it
therefore
acts in contradiction to all past historical experience."
What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all
The Communist Manifesto |
