| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Phantasmagoria and Other Poems by Lewis Carroll: And every one must reach the point at length
Of absolute prostration.
At such a moment ladies learn to give,
To partners who would urge them over-much,
A flat and yet decided negative -
Photographers love such.
There comes a welcome summons - hope revives,
And fading eyes grow bright, and pulses quicken:
Incessant pop the corks, and busy knives
Dispense the tongue and chicken.
Flushed with new life, the crowd flows back again:
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Danny's Own Story by Don Marquis: But they can't fool him, he says. He can tell at a
glance who's got Bright's Disease in their kidneys
and who ain't. His own father, he says, was deathly
sick fur years and years and never knowed it, and
the knowledge come on him sudden like, and he
died. That was before Siwash Injun Sagraw was
ever found out about. Doctor Kirby broke down
and cried right there in the wagon when he thought
of how his father might of been saved if he was
only alive now that that medicine was put up into
bottle form, six fur a five-dollar bill so long as he was
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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 Symposium by Plato: me for crowning you, and neglecting him, who in conversation is the
conqueror of all mankind; and this not only once, as you were the day
before yesterday, but always. Whereupon, taking some of the ribands, he
crowned Socrates, and again reclined.
Then he said: You seem, my friends, to be sober, which is a thing not to
be endured; you must drink--for that was the agreement under which I was
admitted--and I elect myself master of the feast until you are well drunk.
Let us have a large goblet, Agathon, or rather, he said, addressing the
attendant, bring me that wine-cooler. The wine-cooler which had caught his
eye was a vessel holding more than two quarts--this he filled and emptied,
and bade the attendant fill it again for Socrates. Observe, my friends,
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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: the attraction of a favourite expression, or a sonorous cadence, to
overpower his better judgment, or think much of an ornament which is out of
keeping with the general character of his work. He must ever be casting
his eyes upwards from the copy to the original, and down again from the
original to the copy (Rep.). His calling is not held in much honour by the
world of scholars; yet he himself may be excused for thinking it a kind of
glory to have lived so many years in the companionship of one of the
greatest of human intelligences, and in some degree, more perhaps than
others, to have had the privilege of understanding him (Sir Joshua
Reynolds' Lectures: Disc. xv.).
There are fundamental differences in Greek and English, of which some may
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