| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson: With boisterous voice, with eagle glance
To stamp upon extravagance.
For thrift of bricks and greed of guilders,
He was the Buonaparte of Builders.
The foreman, a desponding creature,
Demurred to here and there a feature:
'For surely, sir - with your permeession -
Bricks here, sir, in the main parteetion. . . . '
The builder goggled, gulped, and stared,
The foreman's services were spared.
Thin would not count among his minions
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: grandfather had made him general of the Persians, summoned them all,
each man with a sickle in his hand, into a prairie full of thorns,
and bade them clear it in one day; and how when they, like loyal
men, had finished, he bade them bathe, and next day he took them
into a great meadow and feasted them with corn and wine, and all
that his father's farm would yield, and asked them which day they
liked best; and, when they answered as was to be expected, how he
opened his parable and told them, "Choose, then, to work for the
Persians like slaves, or to be free with me."
Such a tale sounds to me true. It has the very savour of the
parables of the Old Testament; as have, surely, the dreams of the
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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 Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: My own face had now assumed a deep tropical burn. I couldn't muster up
a single commonplace out of the thousand in my head.
"It's an old clock," I told them idiotically.
I think we all believed for a moment that it had smashed in pieces on
the floor.
"We haven't met for many years," said Daisy, her voice as matter-of-fact
as it could ever be.
"Five years next November."
The automatic quality of Gatsby's answer set us all back at least another
minute. I had them both on their feet with the desperate suggestion that
they help me make tea in the kitchen when the demoniac Finn brought it in
The Great Gatsby |
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 Hiero by Xenophon: most fair performance of the same, that is a type of duty not to be
discharged save graciously. Whilst, on the other hand, to scold at
people guilty of remissness, to drive and fine and chasten, these are
proceedings doubtless which go hand in hand with hate and bitterness.
[1] Cf. "Econ." vii. 41.
[2] Or, "tend indisputably to enmity."
[3] Or, "people," "the learner."
What I would say then to the hero-ruler is: Wherever force is needed,
the duty of inflicting chastisement should be assigned to others, but
the distribution of rewards and prizes must be kept in his own
hands.[4]
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