| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: themselves) might surely come into court and witness against him, and there
is an opportunity still for them to appear. But their fathers and brothers
all appear in court (including 'this' Plato), to witness on his behalf; and
if their relatives are corrupted, at least they are uncorrupted; 'and they
are my witnesses. For they know that I am speaking the truth, and that
Meletus is lying.'
This is about all that he has to say. He will not entreat the judges to
spare his life; neither will he present a spectacle of weeping children,
although he, too, is not made of 'rock or oak.' Some of the judges
themselves may have complied with this practice on similar occasions, and
he trusts that they will not be angry with him for not following their
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: things evil and some painful things good?--for I am rather disposed to say
that things are good in as far as they are pleasant, if they have no
consequences of another sort, and in as far as they are painful they are
bad.
I do not know, Socrates, he said, whether I can venture to assert in that
unqualified manner that the pleasant is the good and the painful the evil.
Having regard not only to my present answer, but also to the whole of my
life, I shall be safer, if I am not mistaken, in saying that there are some
pleasant things which are not good, and that there are some painful things
which are good, and some which are not good, and that there are some which
are neither good nor evil.
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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 Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: I read French books, and I look out of the window which is open;
I can see the spikes of my garden-fence, two or three scraggy
trees, and beyond the fence the road, the fields, and beyond them
a broad stretch of pine-wood. Often I admire a boy and girl, both
flaxen-headed and ragged, who clamber on the fence and laugh at
my baldness. In their shining little eyes I read, "Go up, go up,
thou baldhead!" They are almost the only people who care nothing
for my celebrity or my rank.
Visitors do not come to me every day now. I will only mention the
visits of Nikolay and Pyotr Ignatyevitch. Nikolay usually comes
to me on holidays, with some pretext of business, though really
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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 The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: taken when she looked up from her crumbs.
"Did you say tangerine and ginger? I like ginger. You can bring me one."
And then quickly, "I wish that orchestra wouldn't play things from the year
One. We were dancing to that all last Christmas. It's too sickening!"
But it was a charming air. Now that I noticed it, it warmed me.
"I think this is rather a nice place, don't you, Hennie?" I said.
Hennie said: "Ripping!" He meant to say it very low, but it came out very
high in a kind of squeak.
Nice? This place? Nice? For the first time she stared about her, trying
to see what there was...She blinked; her lovely eyes wondered. A very
good-looking elderly man stared back at her through a monocle on a black
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