| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: "Ah!"
"These people must have an enormous fortune."
"They surely must."
"What a magnificent party! It is almost insolent in its splendor."
"Do you imagine they are as rich as Monsieur de Nucingen or Monsieur
de Gondreville?"
"Why, don't you know?"
I leaned forward and recognized the two persons who were talking as
members of that inquisitive genus which, in Paris, busies itself
exclusively with the /Whys/ and /Hows/. /Where does he come from? Who
are they? What's the matter with him? What has she done?/ They lowered
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy: him--to what? To God, to his childhood's faith which had never
been destroyed in him.
II
Kasatsky entered the monastery on the feast of the Intercession
of the Blessed Virgin. The Abbot of that monastery was a
gentleman by birth, a learned writer and a starets, that is, he
belonged to that succession of monks originating in Walachia who
each choose a director and teacher whom they implicitly obey.
This Superior had been a disciple of the starets Ambrose, who was
a disciple of Makarius, who was a disciple of the starets Leonid,
who was a disciple of Paussy Velichkovsky.
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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 The Two Noble Kinsmen by William Shakespeare: The mellencholly humour that infects her.
WOOER.
I am of your minde, Doctor.
[Enter Iaylor, Daughter, Maide.]
DOCTOR.
You'l finde it so; she comes, pray humour her.
IAILOR.
Come, your Love Palamon staies for you, childe,
And has done this long houre, to visite you.
DAUGHTER.
I thanke him for his gentle patience;
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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 Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: It is asked, said Henry Clay, on a memorable occasion,
Will slavery never come to an end? That question, said he,
was asked fifty years ago, and it has been answered by fifty years
of unprecedented prosperity. Spite of the eloquence of the earnest
Abolitionists,--poured out against slavery during thirty years,--
even they must confess, that, in all the probabilities of the case,
that system of barbarism would have continued its horrors far beyond
the limits of the nineteenth century but for the Rebellion,
and perhaps only have disappeared at last in a fiery conflict,
even more fierce and bloody than that which has now been suppressed.
It is no disparagement to truth, that it can only prevail
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