| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde: And then the family skeleton is always reading family prayers. My
stay in England really depends on you, Sir Robert. [Sits down on the
sofa.]
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Taking a seat beside her.] Seriously?
MRS. CHEVELEY. Quite seriously. I want to talk to you about a great
political and financial scheme, about this Argentine Canal Company,
in fact.
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. What a tedious, practical subject for you to
talk about, Mrs. Cheveley!
MRS. CHEVELEY. Oh, I like tedious, practical subjects. What I don't
like are tedious, practical people. There is a wide difference.
|
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 De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: in the sense of most real. The world had always loved the saint as
being the nearest possible approach to the perfection of God.
Christ, through some divine instinct in him, seems to have always
loved the sinner as being the nearest possible approach to the
perfection of man. His primary desire was not to reform people,
any more than his primary desire was to a relieve suffering. To
turn an interesting thief into a tedious honest man was not his
aim. He would have thought little of the Prisoners' Aid Society
and other modern movements of the kind. The conversion of a
publican into a Pharisee would not have seemed to him a great
achievement. But in a manner not yet understood of the world he
|