| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: The night was beginning to fall and the shops to shine with lamps
along the tree-beshadowed thorough-fares of Otto's capital, when the
Countess started on her high emprise. She was jocund at heart;
pleasure and interest had winged her beauty, and she knew it. She
paused before the glowing jeweller's; she remarked and praised a
costume in the milliner's window; and when she reached the lime-tree
walk, with its high, umbrageous arches and stir of passers-by in the
dim alleys, she took her place upon a bench and began to dally with
the pleasures of the hour. It was cold, but she did not feel it,
being warm within; her thoughts, in that dark corner, shone like the
gold and rubies at the jewellers; her ears, which heard the brushing
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: the name of Alcibiades, we are compelled to suspend our judgment on the
genuineness of the extant dialogue.
Neither at this point, nor at any other, do we propose to draw an absolute
line of demarcation between genuine and spurious writings of Plato. They
fade off imperceptibly from one class to another. There may have been
degrees of genuineness in the dialogues themselves, as there are certainly
degrees of evidence by which they are supported. The traditions of the
oral discourses both of Socrates and Plato may have formed the basis of
semi-Platonic writings; some of them may be of the same mixed character
which is apparent in Aristotle and Hippocrates, although the form of them
is different. But the writings of Plato, unlike the writings of Aristotle,
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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 Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne: 'I'm all right, pals,' he gasped once: 'this is the thing to
strengthen the muscles of the larynx.'
'Well, you take the cake!' cried the captain.
'O, I'm good plucked enough,' pursued the sufferer with a broken
utterance. 'But it do seem bloomin' hard to me, that I should be
the only party down with this form of vice, and the only one to
do the funny business. I think one of you other parties might
wake up. Tell a fellow something.'
'The trouble is we've nothing to tell, my son,' returned the
captain.
'I'll tell you, if you like, what I was thinking,' said Herrick.
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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 Grimm's Fairy Tales by Brothers Grimm: One and all come help me, quick!
Haste ye, haste ye!--pick, pick, pick!'
Then first came two white doves, flying in at the kitchen window; next
came two turtle-doves; and after them came all the little birds under
heaven, chirping and fluttering in: and they flew down into the ashes.
And the little doves stooped their heads down and set to work, pick,
pick, pick; and then the others began to pick, pick, pick: and among
them all they soon picked out all the good grain, and put it into a
dish but left the ashes. Long before the end of the hour the work was
quite done, and all flew out again at the windows.
Then Ashputtel brought the dish to her mother, overjoyed at the
Grimm's Fairy Tales |
