| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Professor by Charlotte Bronte: miles removed from X----; a region whose verdure the smoke of
mills has not yet sullied, whose waters still run pure, whose
swells of moorland preserve in some ferny glens that lie between
them the very primal wildness of nature, her moss, her bracken,
her blue-bells, her scents of reed and heather, her free and
fresh breezes. My house is a picturesque and not too spacious
dwelling, with low and long windows, a trellised and leaf-veiled
porch over the front door, just now, on this summer evening,
looking like an arch of roses and ivy. The garden is chiefly
laid out in lawn, formed of the sod of the hills, with herbage
short and soft as moss, full of its own peculiar flowers, tiny
The Professor |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: jealousies are aroused by his proceedings, and he is the subject of many
enmities and conspiracies. Now the art of the Sophist is, as I believe, of
great antiquity; but in ancient times those who practised it, fearing this
odium, veiled and disguised themselves under various names, some under that
of poets, as Homer, Hesiod, and Simonides, some, of hierophants and
prophets, as Orpheus and Musaeus, and some, as I observe, even under the
name of gymnastic-masters, like Iccus of Tarentum, or the more recently
celebrated Herodicus, now of Selymbria and formerly of Megara, who is a
first-rate Sophist. Your own Agathocles pretended to be a musician, but
was really an eminent Sophist; also Pythocleides the Cean; and there were
many others; and all of them, as I was saying, adopted these arts as veils
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: TALBOT.
That will I show you presently.
[Winds his horn. Drums strike up: a peal of ordnance. Enter
Soldiers.]
How say you, madam? are you now persuaded
That Talbot is but shadow of himself?
These are his substance, sinews, arms and strength,
With which he yoketh your rebellious necks,
Razeth your cities and subverts your towns,
And in a moment makes them desolate.
COUNTESS.
|
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 Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: more make him a reputation for virtue than the latter can give him the
sort of glamor cast by vice. As deputy, he never speaks, but he votes
RIGHT. He behaves in his own home as he does in the Chamber.
Consequently, he is held to be one of the best husbands in France.
Though not susceptible of lively interest, he never scolds, unless, to
be sure, he is kept waiting. His friends have named him "dull
weather,"--aptly enough, for there is neither clear light nor total
darkness about him. He is like all the ministers who have succeeded
one another in France since the Charter. A woman with principles could
not have fallen into better hands. It is certainly a great thing for a
virtuous woman to have married a man incapable of follies.
|
