| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: favourite loci communes, one of which, as we find in Lysias, was the
shortness of the time allowed them for preparation. But Socrates points
out that they had them always ready for delivery, and that there was no
difficulty in improvising any number of such orations. To praise the
Athenians among the Athenians was easy,--to praise them among the
Lacedaemonians would have been a much more difficult task. Socrates
himself has turned rhetorician, having learned of a woman, Aspasia, the
mistress of Pericles; and any one whose teachers had been far inferior to
his own--say, one who had learned from Antiphon the Rhamnusian--would be
quite equal to the task of praising men to themselves. When we remember
that Antiphon is described by Thucydides as the best pleader of his day,
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Contrast by Royall Tyler: be too considerate in the choice of our companion.
VAN ROUGH
Right, child; very right. A young woman should
be very sober when she is making her choice, but
when she has once made it, as you have done, I don't
see why she should not be as merry as a grig; I am
sure she has reason enough to be so. Solomon says
that "there is a time to laugh, and a time to weep."
Now, a time for a young woman to laugh is when she
has made sure of a good rich husband. Now, a time
to cry, according to you, Mary, is when she is making
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: with professional detachment. The mind in such cases set up its
defensive machinery of forgetfulness, not against the trivial but
against the unbearable.
For the last day or two he had faced the fact that, not only must
he use every endeavor to revive his past, but that such revival
threatened with cruelty and finality to separate him from the
present.
With an open and unread letter in his hand he stared about the
office. This place was his; he had fought for it, worked for it.
He had an almost physical sense of unseen hands reaching out to
drag him away from it; from David and Lucy, and from Elizabeth.
The Breaking Point |
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 Dreams & Dust by Don Marquis: The heavy clod, so hard to loose,
The preying powers
Of worm and insect underground.
Chide not the flowers!
For spite of scathe and cruel wound,
Unconquered by the sunless hours,
I rise in regal pride, a bold
And golden-hearted, golden-crowned
Marsh Marigold!"
And when she came no more, her creek
Would not believe, but bade us seek
|
