| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde: ARBUTHNOT appears on terrace behind.] For the world has been made
by fools that wise men should live in it!
[Enter L.C. LADY HUNSTANTON and DR. DAUBENY.]
LADY HUNSTANTON. Ah! here you are, dear Lord Illingworth. Well, I
suppose you have been telling our young friend, Gerald, what his
new duties are to be, and giving him a great deal of good advice
over a pleasant cigarette.
LORD ILLINGWORTH. I have been giving him the best of advice, Lady
Hunstanton, and the best of cigarettes.
LADY HUNSTANTON. I am so sorry I was not here to listen to you,
but I suppose I am too old now to learn. Except from you, dear
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: by two voices, that I am still alive. That stratagem failing, out
comes a long sable elegy, bedeck'd with hour-glasses, mattocks,
sculls, spades, and skeletons, with an epitaph as confidently
written to abuse me, and my profession, as if I had been under
ground these twenty years.
And, after such barbarous treatment as this, can the world blame
me, when I ask, What is become of the freedom of an Englishman?
And where is the liberty and property that my old glorious friend
came over to assert? We have drove popery out of the nation, and
sent slavery to foreign climes. The arts only remain in bondage,
when a man of science and character shall be openly insulted in
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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 Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: Yet what faculties and powers you possess for attaining
courage and greatness of heart, I can easily show you; what you
have for upbraiding and accusation, it is for you to show me!
XXI
How did Socrates bear himself in this regard? How else than
as became one who was fully assured that he was the kinsman of
Gods?
XXII
If God had made that part of His own nature which He severed
from Himself and gave to us, liable to be hindered or constrained
either by Himself or any other, He would not have been God, nor
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
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 Walden by Henry David Thoreau: inclined to answer her with equal mystery, and without any more
emphasis of the "they" -- "It is true, they did not make them so
recently, but they do now." Of what use this measuring of me if she
does not measure my character, but only the breadth of my shoulders,
as it were a peg to bang the coat on? We worship not the Graces,
nor the Parcae, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with
full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller's cap,
and all the monkeys in America do the same. I sometimes despair of
getting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by the
help of men. They would have to be passed through a powerful press
first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would
Walden |
