| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Poems by Bronte Sisters: Where colder breezes rise;
Where scarce the scattered, stunted trees
Can yield an answering swell,
But where a wilderness of heath
Returns the sound as well.
For yonder garden, fair and wide,
With groves of evergreen,
Long winding walks, and borders trim,
And velvet lawns between;
Restore to me that little spot,
With gray walls compassed round,
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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 Republic by Plato: entire silence about them. In one very striking passage he tells us that a
work of art, like the State, is a whole; and this conception of a whole and
the love of the newly-born mathematical sciences may be regarded, if not as
the inspiring, at any rate as the regulating principles of Greek art (Xen.
Mem.; and Sophist).
4. Plato makes the true and subtle remark that the physician had better
not be in robust health; and should have known what illness is in his own
person. But the judge ought to have had no similar experience of evil; he
is to be a good man who, having passed his youth in innocence, became
acquainted late in life with the vices of others. And therefore, according
to Plato, a judge should not be young, just as a young man according to
The Republic |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: performed that, they think they have done a good work. I will
here say nothing of the fact that some fast in such a way that
they none the less drink themselves full; some fast by eating
fish and other foods so lavishly that they would come much nearer
to fasting if they ate meat, eggs and butter, and by so doing
would obtain far better results from their fasting. For such
fasting is not fasting, but a mockery of fasting and of God.
Therefore I allow everyone to choose his day, food and quantity
for fasting, as he will, on condition that he do not stop with
that, but have regard to his flesh; let him put upon it fasting,
watching and labor according to its lust and wantonness, and no
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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 Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: the streets.
'I MUST raise funds,' he thought. 'My uncle being dead, the money
in the bank is mine, or would be mine but for the cursed
injustice that has pursued me ever since I was an orphan in a
commercial academy. I know what any other man would do; any other
man in Christendom would forge; although I don't know why I call
it forging, either, when Joseph's dead, and the funds are my own.
When I think of that, when I think that my uncle is really as
dead as mutton, and that I can't prove it, my gorge rises at the
injustice of the whole affair. I used to feel bitterly about that
seven thousand eight hundred pounds; it seems a trifle now! Dear
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