| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: from her. An advertisement quickly met my eye, purporting, that
'Maria Venables had, without any assignable cause, absconded from
her husband; and any person harbouring her, was menaced with the
utmost severity of the law.'
"Perfectly acquainted with Mr. Venables' meanness of soul,
this step did not excite my surprise, and scarcely my contempt.
Resentment in my breast, never survived love. I bade the poor
woman, in a kind tone, wipe her eyes, and request her husband to
come up, and speak to me himself.
"My manner awed him. He respected a lady, though not a woman;
and began to mutter out an apology.
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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 Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: drag such a matter into print. But you see, sir, how you degrade
better men to your own level; and it is needful that those who are
to judge betwixt you and me, betwixt Damien and the devil's
advocate, should understated your letter to have been penned in a
house which could raise, and that very justly, the envy and the
comments of the passers-by. I think (to employ a phrase of yours
which I admire) it "should be attributed" to you that you have
never visited the scene of Damien's life and death. If you had,
and had recalled it, and looked about your pleasant rooms, even
your pen perhaps would have been stayed.
Your sect (and remember, as far as any sect avows me, it is mine)
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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 Cratylus by Plato: doctrine of Heracleitus. Moreover, there is a remarkable coincidence in
the words of Hesiod, when he speaks of Oceanus, 'the origin of Gods;' and
in the verse of Orpheus, in which he describes Oceanus espousing his sister
Tethys. Tethys is nothing more than the name of a spring--to diattomenon
kai ethoumenon. Poseidon is posidesmos, the chain of the feet, because you
cannot walk on the sea--the epsilon is inserted by way of ornament; or
perhaps the name may have been originally polleidon, meaning, that the God
knew many things (polla eidos): he may also be the shaker, apo tou
seiein,--in this case, pi and delta have been added. Pluto is connected
with ploutos, because wealth comes out of the earth; or the word may be a
euphemism for Hades, which is usually derived apo tou aeidous, because 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 Adam Bede by George Eliot: came the strange rap, and again Gyp howled. Adam was at the door
without the loss of a moment; but again all was still, and the
starlight showed there was nothing but the dew-laden grass in
front of the cottage.
Adam for a moment thought uncomfortably about his father; but of
late years he had never come home at dark hours from Treddleston,
and there was every reason for believing that he was then sleeping
off his drunkenness at the "Waggon Overthrown." Besides, to Adam,
the conception of the future was so inseparable from the painful
image of his father that the fear of any fatal accident to him was
excluded by the deeply infixed fear of his continual degradation.
Adam Bede |
