| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: we have ever had. His sense of dramatic situation was unrivalled,
and, if he could not answer his own problems, he could at least put
problems forth, and what more should an artist do? Considered from
the point of view of a creator of character he ranks next to him
who made Hamlet. Had he been articulate, he might have sat beside
him. The only man who can touch the hem of his garment is George
Meredith. Meredith is a prose Browning, and so is Browning. He
used poetry as a medium for writing in prose.
ERNEST. There is something in what you say, but there is not
everything in what you say. In many points you are unjust.
GILBERT. It is difficult not to be unjust to what one loves. But
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: divisions of knowledge; and is becoming aware that besides dialectic,
mathematics, and the arts, there is another field which has been hitherto
unexplored by him. But he has not as yet defined this intermediate
territory which lies somewhere between medicine and mathematics, and he
would have felt that there was as great an impeity in ranking theories of
physics first in the order of knowledge, as in placing the body before the
soul.
It is true, however, that the Timaeus is by no means confined to
speculations on physics. The deeper foundations of the Platonic
philosophy, such as the nature of God, the distinction of the sensible and
intellectual, the great original conceptions of time and space, also appear
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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 Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: whole, the female half of humanity may, by virtue of its structural
adaptions, be found most fitted for the bulk of human labours in the
future!
As with individuals and races, so also with sexes, changed social
conditions may render exactly those subtile qualities, which in one social
state were a disadvantage, of the highest social advantage in another.
The skilled diplomatist or politician, so powerful in his own element, on
board ship during a storm becomes at once of less general value or
consideration than the meanest sailor who can reef a sail or guide a wheel;
and, were we to be reduced again suddenly to a state of nature, a company
of highly civilised men and women would at once, as we have before
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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 Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: wise than they would be if they gave up study, who, not contented with
knowing all that is intelligibly explained in their author, desire in
addition to find in him the solution of many difficulties of which he says
not a word, and never perhaps so much as thought. Their fashion of
philosophizing, however, is well suited to persons whose abilities fall
below mediocrity; for the obscurity of the distinctions and principles of
which they make use enables them to speak of all things with as much
confidence as if they really knew them, and to defend all that they say on
any subject against the most subtle and skillful, without its being
possible for any one to convict them of error. In this they seem to me to
be like a blind man, who, in order to fight on equal terms with a person
Reason Discourse |
