| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: better than the involuntary?
HIPPIAS: And how, Socrates, can those who intentionally err, and
voluntarily and designedly commit iniquities, be better than those who err
and do wrong involuntarily? Surely there is a great excuse to be made for
a man telling a falsehood, or doing an injury or any sort of harm to
another in ignorance. And the laws are obviously far more severe on those
who lie or do evil, voluntarily, than on those who do evil involuntarily.
SOCRATES: You see, Hippias, as I have already told you, how pertinacious I
am in asking questions of wise men. And I think that this is the only good
point about me, for I am full of defects, and always getting wrong in some
way or other. My deficiency is proved to me by the fact that when I meet
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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 Koran: they began to stitch upon themselves some leaves of the garden; and
Adam rebelled against his Lord, and went astray.
Then his Lord chose him, and relented towards him, and guided him.
Said he, 'Go down, ye twain, therefrom altogether, some of you foes to
the other. And if there should come to you from me a guidance; then
whoso follows my guidance shall neither err nor be wretched. But he
who turns away from my reminder, verily, for him shall be a straitened
livelihood; and we will gather him on the resurrection day blind!'
He shall say, 'My Lord! wherefore hast Thou gathered me blind when I
used to see?' He shall say, 'Our signs came to thee, and thou didst
forget them; thus to-day art thou forgotten!'
The Koran |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Poems by T. S. Eliot: Should be resurrected only among friends
Some two or three, who will not touch the bloom
That is rubbed and questioned in the concert room."
--And so the conversation slips
Among velleities and carefully caught regrets
Through attenuated tones of violins
Mingled with remote cornets
And begins.
"You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,
And how, how rare and strange it is, to find
In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,
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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 Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: the grace of railway travel, are brought to the very door of the
modern painter; yet he does not seek them; he remains faithful to
Fontainebleau, to the eternal bridge of Gretz, to the watering-pot
cascade in Cernay valley. Even Fontainebleau was chosen for him;
even in Fontainebleau he shrinks from what is sharply charactered.
But one thing, at least, is certain, whatever he may choose to
paint and in whatever manner, it is good for the artist to dwell
among graceful shapes. Fontainebleau, if it be but quiet scenery,
is classically graceful; and though the student may look for
different qualities, this quality, silently present, will educate
his hand and eye.
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