| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Vision Splendid by William MacLeod Raine: degenerate into fatness--Ned Merrill played the game of business
without any compunctions.
"You're making a bad fight of it, O'Brien. Old style methods won't
win for us. These crank reformers have got the people stirred up.
Keep your ward workers busy, but don't expect them to win." He
leaned forward and brought his fist down heavily on the desk.
"We've got to smash Farnum--discredit him with the bunch of sheep
who are following him."
"What more do youse want? We're callin' him ivery black name under
Hiven."
Merrill shook his head decisively. "Not enough. Prove something.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: are in extreme opposition to one another, and also in inseparable identity.
They may be regarded as the two aspects or expressions under which God or
substance is unfolded to man. Here a step is made beyond the limits of the
Eleatic philosophy. The famous theorem of Spinoza, 'Omnis determinatio est
negatio,' is already contained in the 'negation is relation' of Plato's
Sophist. The grand description of the philosopher in Republic VI, as the
spectator of all time and all existence, may be paralleled with another
famous expression of Spinoza, 'Contemplatio rerum sub specie eternitatis.'
According to Spinoza finite objects are unreal, for they are conditioned by
what is alien to them, and by one another. Human beings are included in
the number of them. Hence there is no reality in human action and no place
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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 Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: From the summit of the mountain
Smote their fists against the heavens,
Smote against the sky their foreheads,
Cracked the sky, but could not break it;
How the Wolverine, uprising,
Made him ready for the encounter,
Bent his knees down, like a squirrel,
Drew his arms back, like a cricket.
"Once he leaped," said old Iagoo,
"Once he leaped, and lo! above him
Bent the sky, as ice in rivers
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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 Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: which required great sobriety, and great spirit too, in its determination,-
-he fixed and set apart the first Sunday night in the month, and the
Saturday night which immediately preceded it, to argue it over, in bed with
my mother: By which contrivance, if you consider, Sir, with yourself,. .
..
These my father, humorously enough, called his beds of justice;--for from
the two different counsels taken in these two different humours, a middle
one was generally found out which touched the point of wisdom as well, as
if he had got drunk and sober a hundred times.
I must not be made a secret of to the world, that this answers full as well
in literary discussions, as either in military or conjugal; but it is not
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