| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: doubt. "When you have read it I will tell you the rest, and you will
then know a Madame Firmiani who is unknown to the world."
"I haven't my spectacles; read it aloud."
Octave began:--
"'My beloved--'"
"Hey, then you are still intimate with her?" interrupted his uncle.
"Why yes, of course."
"You haven't parted from her?"
"Parted!" repeated Octave, "we are married."
"Heavens!" cried Monsieur de Bourbonne, "then why do you live in a
garret?"
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: shall omit much of the 'Seven Lamps' and 'Stones of Venice'; but all
my books written within the last fifteen years will be republished
without change, as new editions of them are called for, with here
and there perhaps an additional note, and having their text divided,
for convenient reference, into paragraphs, consecutive through each
volume. I shall also throw together the shorter fragments that bear
on each other, and fill in with such unprinted lectures or studies
as seem to me worth preserving, so as to keep the volumes, on an
average, composed of about a hundred leaves each.
The first book of which a new edition is required chances to be
'Sesame and Lilies,' from which I now detach the whole preface,
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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 Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: whether free or half-free, composed of older conquered races; of
imported slaves too, and their descendants.
But whence comes the royal race, the aristocracy, the priesthood?
You inquire, and you find that they usually know not themselves.
They are usually--I had almost dared to say, always--foreigners.
They have crossed the neighbouring mountains. The have come by sea,
like Dido to Carthage, like Manco Cassae and Mama Belle to America,
and they have sometimes forgotten when. At least they are wiser,
stronger, fairer, than the aborigines. They are to them--as Jacques
Cartier was to the Indians of Canada--as gods. They are not sure
that they are not descended from gods. They are the Children of the
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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 Common Sense by Thomas Paine: first king of any country was by election, that likewise establishes a
precedent for the next; for to say, that the RIGHT of all future
generations is taken away, by the act of the first electors,
in their choice not only of a king, but of a family of kings for ever,
hath no parallel in or out of scripture but the doctrine of original sin,
which supposes the free will of all men lost in Adam;
and from such comparison, and it will admit of no other,
hereditary succession can derive no glory. For as in Adam all sinned,
and as in the first electors all men obeyed; as in the one all mankind
we re subjected to Satan, and in the other to Sovereignty; as our innocence
was lost in the first, and our authority in the last; and as both disable
Common Sense |
