| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from End of the Tether by Joseph Conrad: an abortive attempt at shouldering. Sterne defeated it
by stepping aside. He turned then swiftly, opening
his mouth very wide as if to shout something after the
engineer, but seemed to think better of it.
Always--as he was ready to confess--on the lookout
for an opening to get on, it had become an instinct with
him to watch the conduct of his immediate superiors for
something "that one could lay hold of." It was his
belief that no skipper in the world would keep his com-
mand for a day if only the owners could be "made to
know." This romantic and naive theory had led him
End of the Tether |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: an appalling inability to recognize it or love it when it arrives that
it is more dangerous to be a great prophet or poet than to promote
twenty companies for swindling simple folk out of their savings. Do
not for a moment suppose that uncultivated people are merely
indifferent to high and noble qualities. They hate them malignantly.
At best, such qualities are like rare and beautiful birds: when they
appear the whole country takes down its guns; but the birds receive
the statuary tribute of having their corpses stuffed.
And it really all comes from the habit of preventing children from
being troublesome. You are so careful of your boy's morals, knowing
how troublesome they may be, that you keep him away from the Venus of
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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 Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: there was a feast, and plenty of pleasant palaver and fol-de-rol.
They had proved to their satisfaction, that the Mississippi did
not empty into the Gulf of California, or into the Atlantic.
They believed it emptied into the Gulf of Mexico.
They turned back, now, and carried their great news to Canada.
But belief is not proof. It was reserved for La Salle to furnish the proof.
He was provokingly delayed, by one misfortune after another, but at last
got his expedition under way at the end of the year 1681. In the dead
of winter he and Henri de Tonty, son of Lorenzo Tonty, who invented
the tontine, his lieutenant, started down the Illinois, with a following
of eighteen Indians brought from New England, and twenty-three Frenchmen.
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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 Symposium by Plato: heavenly bodies is termed astronomy, in the relations of men towards gods
and parents is called divination. For divination is the peacemaker of gods
and men, and works by a knowledge of the tendencies of merely human loves
to piety and impiety. Such is the power of love; and that love which is
just and temperate has the greatest power, and is the source of all our
happiness and friendship with the gods and with one another. I dare say
that I have omitted to mention many things which you, Aristophanes, may
supply, as I perceive that you are cured of the hiccough.
Aristophanes is the next speaker:--
He professes to open a new vein of discourse, in which he begins by
treating of the origin of human nature. The sexes were originally three,
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