| 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: and there, and finishing with a hundred miles' steady
steaming through the maze of an archipelago of small
islands up to a large native town at the end of the beat.
There was a three days' rest for the old ship before
he started her again in inverse order, seeing the same
shores from another bearing, hearing the same voices in
the same places, back again to the Sofala's port of regis-
try on the great highway to the East, where he would
take up a berth nearly opposite the big stone pile of
the harbor office till it was time to start again on the
old round of 1600 miles and thirty days. Not a very
End of the Tether |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: however, Dandie glanced carelessly after his sister as she crossed the
meadow. "The brat's no that bad!" he thought with surprise, for though
he had just been paying her compliments, he had not really looked at
her. "Hey! what's yon?" For the grey dress was cut with short sleeves
and skirts, and displayed her trim strong legs clad in pink stockings of
the same shade as the kerchief she wore round her shoulders, and that
shimmered as she went. This was not her way in undress; he knew her
ways and the ways of the whole sex in the country-side, no one better;
when they did not go barefoot, they wore stout "rig and furrow" woollen
hose of an invisible blue mostly, when they were not black outright; and
Dandie, at sight of this daintiness, put two and two together. It was a
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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 Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: to the priest.
"Monsieur le Cure, this is for your poor people. Monsieur le Cure,
he was a little lad, about ten years old, with a marmot, I think,
and a hurdy-gurdy. One of those Savoyards, you know?"
"I have not seen him."
"Little Gervais? There are no villages here? Can you tell me?"
"If he is like what you say, my friend, he is a little stranger.
Such persons pass through these parts. We know nothing of them."
Jean Valjean seized two more coins of five francs each with violence,
and gave them to the priest.
"For your poor," he said.
Les Miserables |
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 Charmides by Plato: else? (Socrates is intending to show that science differs from the object
of science, as any other relative differs from the object of relation. But
where there is comparison--greater, less, heavier, lighter, and the like--a
relation to self as well as to other things involves an absolute
contradiction; and in other cases, as in the case of the senses, is hardly
conceivable. The use of the genitive after the comparative in Greek,
(Greek), creates an unavoidable obscurity in the translation.)
Yes.
Which is less, if the other is conceived to be greater?
To be sure.
And if we could find something which is at once greater than itself, and
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