| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: repeated by him.
"So he, too, has seen that young lady!" said Souchet.
And then there were comments, laughter, innocent mockery, full of
the liveliness familiar to artists, but which pained Hippolyte
frightfully. A certain native reticence made him uncomfortable as
he saw his heart's secret so carelessly handled, his passion
rent, torn to tatters, a young and unknown girl, whose life
seemed to be so modest, the victim of condemnation, right or
wrong, but pronounced with such reckless indifference. He
pretended to be moved by a spirit of contradiction, asking each
for proofs of his assertions, and their jests began again.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Adam Bede by George Eliot: thinking we'd go into one of the houses, and I would read and pray
with them. But as I passed along by the cottages and saw the aged
and trembling women at the doors, and the hard looks of the men,
who seemed to have their eyes no more filled with the sight of the
Sabbath morning than if they had been dumb oxen that never looked
up to the sky, I felt a great movement in my soul, and I trembled
as if I was shaken by a strong spirit entering into my weak body.
And I went to where the little flock of people was gathered
together, and stepped on the low wall that was built against the
green hillside, and I spoke the words that were given to me
abundantly. And they all came round me out of all the cottages,
Adam Bede |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Second Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world because
of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe
to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose
that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the
providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued
through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he
gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due
to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any
departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a
living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope--fervently
do we pray--that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.
Second Inaugural Address |
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 Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: cost you. All you can do NOW is not to think at all. And I who
should have liked to seem to you--well, sublime!"
He could only after a moment re-echo Miss Barrace. "You're
wonderful!"
"I'm old and abject and hideous"--she went on as without hearing
him. "Abject above all. Or old above all. It's when one's old
that it's worst. I don't care what becomes of it--let what WILL;
there it is. It's a doom--I know it; you can't see it more than I
do myself. Things have to happen as they will." With which she
came back again to what, face to face with him, had so quite broken
down. "Of course you wouldn't, even if possible, and no matter
|
