| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: then, that things which are said to be made by nature are the work of
divine art, and that things which are made by man out of these are works of
human art. And so there are two kinds of making and production, the one
human and the other divine.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: Then, now, subdivide each of the two sections which we have
already.
THEAETETUS: How do you mean?
STRANGER: I mean to say that you should make a vertical division of
production or invention, as you have already made a lateral one.
THEAETETUS: I have done so.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: made her feel suddenly miserable, as she had once felt when she saw
her father's hands trembling in a moment of trouble.
"No, my dear, no. I must get back."
In three minutes the Vicar was on horseback again, having gone
magnanimously through a duty much harder than the renunciation
of whist, or even than the writing of penitential meditations.
CHAPTER LIII.
It is but a shallow haste which concludeth insincerity from what
outsiders call inconsistency--putting a dead mechanism of "ifs"
and "therefores" for the living myriad of hidden suckers whereby
the belief and the conduct are wrought into mutual sustainment.
Middlemarch |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of
the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.
The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its
complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of
capital.
Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of
children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.
But, you will say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations,
when we replace home education by social.
And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by
the social conditions under which you educate, by the
The Communist Manifesto |
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 Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: the children knew by her face that she hadn't got them. "Let me see." And
she said to Sadie firmly, "Tell cook I'll let her have them in ten minutes.
Sadie went.
"Now, Laura," said her mother quickly, "come with me into the smoking-room.
I've got the names somewhere on the back of an envelope. You'll have to
write them out for me. Meg, go upstairs this minute and take that wet
thing off your head. Jose, run and finish dressing this instant. Do you
hear me, children, or shall I have to tell your father when he comes home
to-night? And--and, Jose, pacify cook if you do go into the kitchen, will
you? I'm terrified of her this morning."
The envelope was found at last behind the dining-room clock, though how it
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