| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: pleasure is to be desired, or whether this entire desirableness is not
rather the attribute of another class. But if pleasures and pains consist
in the violation and restoration of limit, may there not be a neutral
state, in which there is neither dissolution nor restoration? That is a
further question, and admitting, as we must, the possibility of such a
state, there seems to be no reason why the life of wisdom should not exist
in this neutral state, which is, moreover, the state of the gods, who
cannot, without indecency, be supposed to feel either joy or sorrow.
The second class of pleasures involves memory. There are affections which
are extinguished before they reach the soul, and of these there is no
consciousness, and therefore no memory. And there are affections which the
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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 Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: wife takes sugar?"
She lifted the tray and went off with it to Mrs. Dalloway.
Richard twisted a muffler twice round his throat and struggled up
on deck. His body, which had grown white and tender in a dark room,
tingled all over in the fresh air. He felt himself a man undoubtedly
in the prime of life. Pride glowed in his eye as he let the wind
buffet him and stood firm. With his head slightly lowered he
sheered round corners, strode uphill, and met the blast. There was
a collision. For a second he could not see what the body was he
had run into. "Sorry." "Sorry." It was Rachel who apologised.
They both laughed, too much blown about to speak. She drove open
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