| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: difficulties, which may be ascribed to preconceived notions of
commentators, who imagine that Protagoras the Sophist ought always to be in
the wrong, and his adversary Socrates in the right; or that in this or that
passage--e.g. in the explanation of good as pleasure--Plato is inconsistent
with himself; or that the Dialogue fails in unity, and has not a proper
beginning, middle, and ending. They seem to forget that Plato is a
dramatic writer who throws his thoughts into both sides of the argument,
and certainly does not aim at any unity which is inconsistent with freedom,
and with a natural or even wild manner of treating his subject; also that
his mode of revealing the truth is by lights and shadows, and far-off and
opposing points of view, and not by dogmatic statements or definite
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Within the Tides by Joseph Conrad: The old fellow departed from his impressive immobility to turn his
rakishly hatted head and look at me with his old, black, lack-
lustre eyes.
"He did leave him there," he uttered, weightily, returning to the
contemplation of the wall. "Cloete didn't mean to allow anybody,
let alone a thing like Stafford, to stand in the way of his great
notion of making George and himself, and Captain Harry, too, for
that matter, rich men. And he didn't think much of consequences.
These patent-medicine chaps don't care what they say or what they
do. They think the world's bound to swallow any story they like to
tell. . . He stands listening for a bit. And it gives him quite a
Within the Tides |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: shadow forth his character? Ah! but in some low and obscure nook,
--some narrow closet on the ground-floor, shut, locked and bolted,
and the key flung away,--or beneath the marble pavement, in a
stagnant water-puddle, with the richest pattern of mosaic-work
above,--may lie a corpse, half decayed, and still decaying, and
diffusing its death-scent all through the palace! The inhabitant
will not be conscious of it, for it has long been his daily breath!
Neither will the visitors, for they smell only the rich odors which
the master sedulously scatters through the palace, and the incense
which they bring, and delight to burn before him! Now and then,
perchance, comes in a seer, before whose sadly gifted eye the
House of Seven Gables |
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 Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: noting strange parallelisms and drawing mystified conclusions.
A weird bunch of cuttings, all told; and I can at this date scarcely
envisage the callous rationalism with which I set them aside.
But I was then convinced that young Wilcox had known of the older
matters mentioned by the professor.
II. The Tale of Inspector
Legrasse.
The older matters which had made the sculptor's dream
and bas-relief so significant to my uncle formed the subject of
the second half of his long manuscript. Once before, it appears,
Professor Angell had seen the hellish outlines of the nameless
Call of Cthulhu |
