| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: self-indulgence are virtue and happiness; all the rest is mere talk.'
Socrates compliments Callicles on his frankness in saying what other men
only think. According to his view, those who want nothing are not happy.
'Why,' says Callicles, 'if they were, stones and the dead would be happy.'
Socrates in reply is led into a half-serious, half-comic vein of
reflection. 'Who knows,' as Euripides says, 'whether life may not be
death, and death life?' Nay, there are philosophers who maintain that even
in life we are dead, and that the body (soma) is the tomb (sema) of the
soul. And some ingenious Sicilian has made an allegory, in which he
represents fools as the uninitiated, who are supposed to be carrying water
to a vessel, which is full of holes, in a similarly holey sieve, and this
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Scarecrow of Oz by L. Frank Baum: across a much larger bay toward a distant headland
where the caves were located, right at the water's
edge. They were nearly a mile from shore and about
halfway across the bay when Trot suddenly sat up
straight and exclaimed: "What's that, Cap'n?"
He stopped rowing and turned half around to look.
"That, Trot," he slowly replied, "looks to me mighty
like a whirlpool."
"What makes it, Cap'n?"
"A whirl in the air makes the whirl in the water. I
was afraid as we'd meet with trouble, Trot. Things
The Scarecrow of Oz |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Lover's Complaint by William Shakespeare: And was my own fee-simple, (not in part,)
What with his heart in youth, and youth in art,
Threw my affections in his charmed power,
Reserv'd the stalk, and gave him all my flower.
'Yet did I not, as some my equals did,
Demand of him, nor being desired yielded;
Finding myself in honour so forbid,
With safest distance I mine honour shielded:
Experience for me many bulwarks builded
Of proofs new-bleeding, which remain'd the foil
Of this false jewel, and his amorous spoil.
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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 The Mountains by Stewart Edward White: The Tenderfoot and I stood on the log and heaved
while Wes stood on the shore and pushed. Suddenly
it occurred to me that if Tunemah made up his silly
mind to come, he would probably do it all at once,
in which case the Tenderfoot and I would have about
as much show for life as fossil formations. I didn't
say anything about it to the Tenderfoot, but I hitched
my six-shooter around to the front, resolved to find
out how good I was at wing-shooting horses. But
Tunemah declared he would die for his convictions.
"All right," said we, "die then," with the embellishment
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