| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: calling her father. In an instant, like the flash of lightning,
a thought ran through her mind that it must be the bearer
of Elfonzo's communication. "It is not a dream!" she said,
"no, I cannot read dreams. Oh! I would to Heaven I was near
that glowing eloquence--that poetical language--it charms the
mind in an inexpressible manner, and warms the coldest heart."
While consoling herself with this strain, her father rushed into
her room almost frantic with rage, exclaiming: "Oh, Ambulinia!
Ambulinia!! undutiful, ungrateful daughter! What does this mean?
Why does this letter bear such heart-rending intelligence?
Will you quit a father's house with this debased wretch, without a
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: representing them as paradigms; this is again answered by the 'argumentum
ad infinitum.' We may remark, in passing, that the process which is thus
described has no real existence. The mind, after having obtained a general
idea, does not really go on to form another which includes that, and all
the individuals contained under it, and another and another without end.
The difficulty belongs in fact to the Megarian age of philosophy, and is
due to their illogical logic, and to the general ignorance of the ancients
respecting the part played by language in the process of thought. No such
perplexity could ever trouble a modern metaphysician, any more than the
fallacy of 'calvus' or 'acervus,' or of 'Achilles and the tortoise.' These
'surds' of metaphysics ought to occasion no more difficulty in speculation
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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 O Pioneers! by Willa Cather: hitching the horses to the wagon to take the
wedding presents and the bride and groom up to
their new home, on Alexandra's north quarter.
When Ivar drove up to the gate, Emil and
Marie Shabata began to carry out the presents,
and Alexandra went into her bedroom to bid
Signa good-bye and to give her a few words of
good counsel. She was surprised to find that
the bride had changed her slippers for heavy
shoes and was pinning up her skirts. At that
moment Nelse appeared at the gate with the
O Pioneers! |
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 Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: vanity, our ornament and ostentation, our limitation, our
stupidity! Every virtue inclines to stupidity, every stupidity to
virtue; "stupid to the point of sanctity," they say in Russia,--
let us be careful lest out of pure honesty we eventually become
saints and bores! Is not life a hundred times too short for us--
to bore ourselves? One would have to believe in eternal life in
order to ....
228. I hope to be forgiven for discovering that all moral
philosophy hitherto has been tedious and has belonged to the
soporific appliances--and that "virtue," in my opinion, has been
MORE injured by the TEDIOUSNESS of its advocates than by anything
Beyond Good and Evil |
