| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber: growing incoherent. "What d'you mean, screeching like a maniac?
Like a wild woman? The neighbors'll think I've killed you. What
d'you mean, anyway!"
"I mean I'm tired of watching it, that's what. Sick and
tired."
"Y'are, huh? Well, young lady, just let me tell YOU
something----"
He told her. There followed one of those incredible quarrels, as
sickening as they are human, which can take place only between
two people who love each other; who love each other so well that
each knows with cruel certainty the surest way to wound the
One Basket |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: effect of equal amounts of food on different persons. The hardworking
man has a good complexion, his muscles are well fed, he is robust and
strong. The man who abstains from work, on the other hand, may be
detected by his miserable appearance; he is blotched and puffy, and
devoid of strength. This observation, I say, was not wasted on him. On
the contrary, turning it over in his mind that any one who chooses, as
a matter of private judgment, to devote himself to toil may hope to
present a very creditable appearance physically, he enjoined upon the
eldest for the time being in every gymnasium to see to it that the
labours of the class were proportional to the meats.[12] And to my
mind he was not out of his reckoning in this matter more than
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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 Meno by Plato: observation that Meno prefers the familiar definition, which is embellished
with poetical language, to the better and truer one; or (2) the shrewd
reflection, which may admit of an application to modern as well as to
ancient teachers, that the Sophists having made large fortunes; this must
surely be a criterion of their powers of teaching, for that no man could
get a living by shoemaking who was not a good shoemaker; or (3) the remark
conveyed, almost in a word, that the verbal sceptic is saved the labour of
thought and enquiry (ouden dei to toiouto zeteseos). Characteristic also
of the temper of the Socratic enquiry is, (4) the proposal to discuss the
teachableness of virtue under an hypothesis, after the manner of the
mathematicians; and (5) the repetition of the favourite doctrine which
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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 Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: his letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and
by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical conformation
and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and
sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision
(when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to
that species of energetic concision--that abrupt, weighty,
unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation--that leaden, self-
balanced and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may be
observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of
opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement.
It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his
The Fall of the House of Usher |
