| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: considered a point of honour not to employ the underground railway,
omnibuses, or any artificial means of locomotion. The race is to
the swift.
Besides the professional posers of the studio there are posers of
the Row, the posers at afternoon teas, the posers in politics and
the circus posers. All four classes are delightful, but only the
last class is ever really decorative. Acrobats and gymnasts can
give the young painter infinite suggestions, for they bring into
their art an element of swiftness of motion and of constant change
that the studio model necessarily lacks. What is interesting in
these 'slaves of the ring' is that with them Beauty is an
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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 Sophist by Plato: Indeed, Theaetetus, the task is a difficult one.
THEAETETUS: Why?
STRANGER: He who says that falsehood exists has the audacity to assert the
being of not-being; for this is implied in the possibility of falsehood.
But, my boy, in the days when I was a boy, the great Parmenides protested
against this doctrine, and to the end of his life he continued to inculcate
the same lesson--always repeating both in verse and out of verse:
'Keep your mind from this way of enquiry, for never will you show that not-
being is.'
Such is his testimony, which is confirmed by the very expression when
sifted a little. Would you object to begin with the consideration of the
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