| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane: station after station until the youth had believed
that he must be a hero. There was a lavish ex-
penditure of bread and cold meats, coffee, and
pickles and cheese. As he basked in the smiles
of the girls and was patted and complimented by
the old men, he had felt growing within him the
strength to do mighty deeds of arms.
After complicated journeyings with many
pauses, there had come months of monotonous
life in a camp. He had had the belief that real
war was a series of death struggles with small
The Red Badge of Courage |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Son of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: himself, was around but little, and then always avoided coming
into contact with the ladies. A fact which naturally aroused only
laughing comment on the rough trader's bashfulness. He accompanied
the men on several hunting trips where they found him perfectly
at home and well versed in all the finer points of big game hunting.
Of an evening he often spent much time with the white foreman of
the big farm, evidently finding in the society of this rougher
man more common interests than the cultured guests of Bwana
possessed for him. So it came that his was a familiar figure
about the premises by night. He came and went as he saw fit,
often wandering along in the great flower garden that was the
The Son of Tarzan |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: conventional and the true.
The greater part of the dialogue is devoted to setting up and throwing down
definitions of science and knowledge. Proceeding from the lower to the
higher by three stages, in which perception, opinion, reasoning are
successively examined, we first get rid of the confusion of the idea of
knowledge and specific kinds of knowledge,--a confusion which has been
already noticed in the Lysis, Laches, Meno, and other dialogues. In the
infancy of logic, a form of thought has to be invented before the content
can be filled up. We cannot define knowledge until the nature of
definition has been ascertained. Having succeeded in making his meaning
plain, Socrates proceeds to analyze (1) the first definition which
|
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 Rinkitink In Oz by L. Frank Baum: guarding them, yourself? They seem gentle enough, I'm
sure."
"The prisoners," returned King Gos, "are the King and
Queen of Pingaree, a small island north of here. They
are very evil people and came to our islands of Regos
and Coregos to conquer them and slay our poor people.
Also they intended to plunder us of all our riches, but
by good fortune we were able to defeat and capture
them. However, they have a son who is a terrible wizard
and who by magic art is trying to find this awful King
and Queen of Pingaree, and to set them free, that they
Rinkitink In Oz |
