| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay: It was not below individuality, but above it. It was not the One, or
the Many, but something else far beyond either. It approached
Crystalman, and entered his body - if that bright mist could be
called a body. It passed right through him, and the passage caused
him the most exquisite pleasure. The Muspel-stream was Crystalman's
food. The stream emerged from the other side on to the sphere, in a
double condition. Part of it reappeared intrinsically unaltered, but
shivered into a million fragments. These were the green corpuscles.
In passing through Crystalman they had escaped absorption by reason
of their extreme minuteness. The other part of the stream had not
escaped. Its fire had been abstracted, its cement was withdrawn,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: than elsewhere, and two people persistently flirting could
by no means escape from "the various entanglements, weights,
blows, clashings, motions, by which things severally go on."
Whatever Miss Vincy did must be remarked, and she was perhaps the more
conspicuous to admirers and critics because just now Mrs. Vincy,
after some struggle, had gone with Fred to stay a little while at
Stone Court, there being no other way of at once gratifying old
Featherstone and keeping watch against Mary Garth, who appeared a less
tolerable daughter-in-law in proportion as Fred's illness disappeared.
Aunt Bulstrode, for example, came a little oftener into Lowick
Gate to see Rosamond, now she was alone. For Mrs. Bulstrode had
Middlemarch |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: "The labour of rising from the ground," said the artist, "will be
great, as we see it in the heavier domestic fowls; but as we mount
higher the earth's attraction and the body's gravity will be
gradually diminished, till we shall arrive at a region where the
man shall float in the air without any tendency to fall; no care
will then be necessary but to move forward, which the gentlest
impulse will effect. You, sir, whose curiosity is so extensive,
will easily conceive with what pleasure a philosopher, furnished
with wings and hovering in the sky, would see the earth and all its
inhabitants rolling beneath him, and presenting to him
successively, by its diurnal motion, all the countries within the
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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 Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: badly.' The solution of the riddle is this, I imagine:--By 'badly' Homer
meant 'bad' and 'knew' stands for 'to know.' Put the words together;--the
metre will suffer, but the poet's meaning is clear;--'Margites knew all
these things, but it was bad for him to know them.' And, obviously, if it
was bad for him to know so many things, he must have been a good-for-
nothing, unless the argument has played us false.
ALCIBIADES: But I do not think that it has, Socrates: at least, if the
argument is fallacious, it would be difficult for me to find another which
I could trust.
SOCRATES: And you are right in thinking so.
ALCIBIADES: Well, that is my opinion.
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