| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells: influence of the sun, or the warmth of the earth from anything; you can
screen things by sheets of metal from Marconi's rays, but nothing will cut
off the gravitational attraction of the sun or the gravitational
attraction of the earth. Yet why there should be nothing is hard to say.
Cavor did not see why such a substance should not exist, and certainly I
could not tell him. I had never thought of such a possibility before. He
showed me by calculations on paper, which Lord Kelvin, no doubt, or
Professor Lodge, or Professor Karl Pearson, or any of those great
scientific people might have understood, but which simply reduced me to a
hopeless muddle, that not only was such a substance possible, but that it
must satisfy certain conditions. It was an amazing piece of reasoning.
The First Men In The Moon |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: one, or the division of one, is the cause of two? And you would loudly
asseverate that you know of no way in which anything comes into existence
except by participation in its own proper essence, and consequently, as far
as you know, the only cause of two is the participation in duality--this is
the way to make two, and the participation in one is the way to make one.
You would say: I will let alone puzzles of division and addition--wiser
heads than mine may answer them; inexperienced as I am, and ready to start,
as the proverb says, at my own shadow, I cannot afford to give up the sure
ground of a principle. And if any one assails you there, you would not
mind him, or answer him, until you had seen whether the consequences which
follow agree with one another or not, and when you are further required to
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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 Apology by Xenophon: debating the line of his defence, to which Socrates in the first
instance answered: "What! do I not seem to you to have spent my whole
life in meditating my defence?" And when Hermogenes asked him, "How?"
he added: "By a lifelong persistence in doing nothing wrong, and that
I take to be the finest practice for his defence which a man could
devise." Presently reverting to the topic, Hermogenes demanded: "Do
you not see, SOcrates, how often Athenian juries[8] are constrained by
arguments to put quite innocent people to death, and not less often to
acquit the guilty, either through some touch of pity excited by the
pleadings, or that the defendant had skill to turn some charming
phrase?" Thus appealed to, Socrates replied: "Nay, solemnly I tell
The Apology |
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 Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories by Alice Dunbar: room.
"Is it--is it anything much, doctor?" she gasped.
AEsculapius shook his head as wisely as the occasion would
permit. She followed him out of the room into the shop.
"Do you--will he get well, doctor?"
AEsculapius buttoned up his frock coat, smoothed his shining hat,
cleared his throat, then replied oracularly,
"Madam, he is completely burned out inside. Empty as a shell,
madam, empty as a shell. He cannot live, for he has nothing to
live on."
As the cobblestones rattled under the doctor's equipage rolling
The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories |
