| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Rescue by Joseph Conrad: eyes till she felt the canoe touch the strand. The two men leaped
instantly out of it. Mrs. Travers rose, abruptly. Nobody made a
sound. She stumbled out of the canoe on to the beach and almost
before she had recovered her balance the torch was thrust into
her hand. The heat, the nearness of the blaze confused and
blinded her till, instinctively, she raised the torch high above
her head. For a moment she stood still, holding aloft the fierce
flame from which a few sparks were falling slowly.
A naked bronze arm lighted from above pointed out the direction
and Mrs. Travers began to walk toward the featureless black mass
of the stockade. When after a few steps she looked back over her
The Rescue |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The School For Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan: CHARLES. Egad, that's true. What parchment have we here? Oh,
our genealogy in full. [Taking pedigree down.] Here, Careless,
you shall have no common bit of mahogany, here's the family tree
for you, you rogue! This shall be your hammer, and now you may
knock down my ancestors with their own pedigree.
SIR OLIVER. What an unnatural rogue!--an ex post facto parricide!
[Aside.]
CARELESS. Yes, yes, here's a list of your generation indeed;--
faith, Charles, this is the most convenient thing you could have
found for the business, for 'twill not only serve as a hammer,
but a catalogue into the bargain. Come, begin--A-going, a-going,
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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 The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: declasse, as it were. He has entered, so to speak, the social
nirvana, a not unfitting first step, as he regards it, toward
entering the eventual nirvana beyond. Such abdication now takes
place without particular cause. After a certain time of life, and
long before a man grows old, it is the fashion thus to make one's bow.
Chapter 4. Language.
A man's personal equation, as astronomers call the effect of his
individuality, is kin, for all its complexity, to those simple
algebraical problems which so puzzled us at school. To solve either
we must begin by knowing the values of the constants that enter into
its expression. Upon the a b c's of the one, as upon those of 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 Charmides by Plato: that which has the effect. Think over all this, and, like a brave youth,
tell me--What is temperance?
After a moment's pause, in which he made a real manly effort to think, he
said: My opinion is, Socrates, that temperance makes a man ashamed or
modest, and that temperance is the same as modesty.
Very good, I said; and did you not admit, just now, that temperance is
noble?
Yes, certainly, he said.
And the temperate are also good?
Yes.
And can that be good which does not make men good?
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