| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: only know that he knows something, and has a certain knowledge, whether
concerning himself or other men.
True.
Then how will this knowledge or science teach him to know what he knows?
Say that he knows health;--not wisdom or temperance, but the art of
medicine has taught it to him;--and he has learned harmony from the art of
music, and building from the art of building,--neither, from wisdom or
temperance: and the same of other things.
That is evident.
How will wisdom, regarded only as a knowledge of knowledge or science of
science, ever teach him that he knows health, or that he knows building?
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: a lawyer? What more terrible to endure than the acrimonious pin-pricks
to which a passionate soul prefers a dagger-thrust? Granville
neglected his home. Everything there was unendurable. His children,
broken by their mother's frigid despotism, dared not go with him to
the play; indeed, Granville could never give them any pleasure without
bringing down punishment from their terrible mother. His loving nature
was weaned to indifference, to a selfishness worse than death. His
boys, indeed, he saved from this hell by sending them to school at an
early age, and insisting on his right to train them. He rarely
interfered between his wife and her daughters; but he was resolved
that they should marry as soon as they were old enough.
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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 Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: there had been time, if it hadn't been impossible, she couldn't have helped
crying because she was an only child, and no brother had ever said "Twig?"
to her; no sister would ever say, as Meg said to Jose that moment, "I've
never known your hair go up more successfully than it has to-night!"
But, of course, there was no time. They were at the drill hall already;
there were cabs in front of them and cabs behind. The road was bright on
either side with moving fan-like lights, and on the pavement gay couples
seemed to float through the air; little satin shoes chased each other like
birds.
"Hold on to me, Leila; you'll get lost," said Laura.
"Come on, girls, let's make a dash for it," said Laurie.
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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 Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: indeed, to the clever repetition of L, D, and N, but part to
this variety of scansion in the groups. The groups which,
like the bar in music, break up the verse for utterance, fall
uniambically; and in declaiming a so-called iambic verse, it
may so happen that we never utter one iambic foot. And yet
to this neglect of the original beat there is a limit.
'Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts,' (3)
is, with all its eccentricities, a good heroic line; for
though it scarcely can be said to indicate the beat of the
iamb, it certainly suggests no other measure to the ear. But
begin
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