| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: having wisdom and mind and knowledge and memory of all things, but having
no sense of pleasure or pain, and wholly unaffected by these and the like
feelings?
PROTARCHUS: Neither life, Socrates, appears eligible to me, nor is likely,
as I should imagine, to be chosen by any one else.
SOCRATES: What would you say, Protarchus, to both of these in one, or to
one that was made out of the union of the two?
PROTARCHUS: Out of the union, that is, of pleasure with mind and wisdom?
SOCRATES: Yes, that is the life which I mean.
PROTARCHUS: There can be no difference of opinion; not some but all would
surely choose this third rather than either of the other two, and in
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: with a startled glance up at his face. Little Eric dropped his
towel, threw an arm about Nils and one about Hilda, gave them a
clumsy squeeze, and then stumbled out to the porch.
During supper Nils heard exactly how much land each of his
eight grown brothers farmed, how their crops were coming on, and
how much livestock they were feeding. His mother watched him
narrowly as she talked. "You've got better looking, Nils," she
remarked abruptly, whereupon he grinned and the children giggled.
Eric, although he was eighteen and as tall as Nils, was always
accounted a child, being the last of so many sons. His face seemed
childlike, too, Nils thought, and he had the open, wandering eves
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: with a distant, dying scream; and then, with a fresh impulse,
winged fleetly forward, dipped over a hilltop, and were gone.
They seemed solemn and ancient things, sailing the blue air:
perhaps co-oeval with the mountain where they haunted,
perhaps emigrants from Rome, where the glad legions may have
shouted to behold them on the morn of battle.
But if birds were rare, the place abounded with rattlesnakes
- the rattlesnake's nest, it might have been named. Wherever
we brushed among the bushes, our passage woke their angry
buzz. One dwelt habitually in the wood-pile, and sometimes,
when we came for firewood, thrust up his small head between
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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 Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: and died quickly, unresistingly, and graciously, in the wide
curves of transparent foam on the yellow sand. Above, the white
clouds sailed rapidly southwards as if intent upon overtaking
something. Ali seemed anxious.
"Master," he said timidly, "time to get house now. Long way off
to pull. All ready, sir."
"Wait," whispered Almayer.
Now she was gone his business was to forget, and he had a strange
notion that it should be done systematically and in order. To
Ali's great dismay he fell on his hands and knees, and, creeping
along the sand, erased carefully with his hand all traces of
Almayer's Folly |
