| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from On Revenues by Xenophon: In the event of an enemy advancing in large numbers they might
certainly make off with whatever corn or wine or cattle they found
outside. But even if they did get hold of the silver ore, it would be
little better to them than a heap of stones.[58] But how is an enemy
ever to march upon the mines in force? The nearest state, Megara, is
distant, I take it, a good deal over sixty miles;[59] and the next
closest, Thebes, a good deal nearer seventy.[60] Supposing then an
enemy to advance from some such point to attack the mines, he cannot
avoid passing Athens; and presuming his force to be small, we may
expect him to be annihilated by our cavalry and frontier police.[61] I
say, presuming his force to be small, since to march with anything
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: to the war," and to this, again, there succeeded an antiquated waltz.
Also, long after Nozdrev had ceased to turn the handle, one
particularly shrill-pitched pipe which had, throughout, refused to
harmonise with the rest kept up a protracted whistling on its own
account. Then followed an exhibition of tobacco pipes--pipes of clay,
of wood, of meerschaum, pipes smoked and non-smoked; pipes wrapped in
chamois leather and not so wrapped; an amber-mounted hookah (a stake
won at cards) and a tobacco pouch (worked, it was alleged, by some
countess who had fallen in love with Nozdrev at a posthouse, and whose
handiwork Nozdrev averred to constitute the "sublimity of
superfluity"--a term which, in the Nozdrevian vocabulary, purported to
Dead Souls |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: situation as the writer of allegories. The FAERY QUEEN was
an allegory, I am willing to believe; but it survives as an
imaginative tale in incomparable verse. The case of Bunyan
is widely different; and yet in this also Allegory, poor
nymph, although never quite forgotten, is sometimes rudely
thrust against the wall. Bunyan was fervently in earnest;
with 'his fingers in his ears, he ran on,' straight for his
mark. He tells us himself, in the conclusion to the first
part, that he did not fear to raise a laugh; indeed, he
feared nothing, and said anything; and he was greatly served
in this by a certain rustic privilege of his style, 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 Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: realised only through pain or in solitude. The ideals that we owe
to Christ are the ideals of the man who abandons society entirely,
or of the man who resists society absolutely. But man is naturally
social. Even the Thebaid became peopled at last. And though the
cenobite realises his personality, it is often an impoverished
personality that he so realises. Upon the other hand, the terrible
truth that pain is a mode through which man may realise himself
exercises a wonderful fascination over the world. Shallow speakers
and shallow thinkers in pulpits and on platforms often talk about
the world's worship of pleasure, and whine against it. But it is
rarely in the world's history that its ideal has been one of joy
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