| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: these two wills, one old, one new, one carnal, the other
spiritual, contended with each other and disturbed my soul. I
understood by my own experience what I had read, 'flesh lusteth
against spirit, and spirit against flesh.' It was myself indeed
in both the wills, yet more myself in that which I approved in
myself than in that which I disapproved in myself. Yet it was
through myself that habit had attained so fierce a mastery over
me, because I had willingly come whither I willed not. Still
bound to earth, I refused, O God, to fight on thy side, as much
afraid to be freed from all bonds, as I ought to have feared
being trammeled by them.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lin McLean by Owen Wister: yet."
"Yes, m'm."
"Good-day, m'm."
"Thank yu', m'm.'
They got themselves out of the station and into their saddles.
"No, she don't understand things yet," soliloquized the Virginian. "Oh
dear, no." He turned his slow, dark eyes upon us. "You Lin McLean," said
he, in his gentle voice, "you have cert'nly fooled me plumb through this
mawnin'."
Then the horde rode out of town, chastened and orderly till it was quite
small across the sagebrush, when reaction seized it. It sped suddenly and
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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 Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: consequence, and be found out and hanged? Should I ever pardon
myself for having been the means of doing injury to a single one of
our esteemed subscribers? The prescription whereof I speak--that
is to say, whereof I DON'T speak--shall be buried in this bosom.
No, I am a humane man. I am not one of your Bluebeards to go and
say to my wife, "My dear! I am going away for a few days to
Brighton. Here are all the keys of the house. You may open every
door and closet, except the one at the end of the oak room opposite
the fireplace, with the little bronze Shakespeare on the
mantelpiece (or what not)." I don't say this to a woman--unless,
to be sure, I want to get rid of her--because, after such a
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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 Protagoras by Plato: Protagoras been allowed by Plato to make the Aristotelian distinction, and
say that virtue is not knowledge, but is accompanied with knowledge; or to
point out with Aristotle that the same quality may have more than one
opposite; or with Plato himself in the Phaedo to deny that good is a mere
exchange of a greater pleasure for a less--the unity of virtue and the
identity of virtue and knowledge would have required to be proved by other
arguments.
The victory of Socrates over Protagoras is in every way complete when their
minds are fairly brought together. Protagoras falls before him after two
or three blows. Socrates partially gains his object in the first part of
the Dialogue, and completely in the second. Nor does he appear at any
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