| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: and sacrifices. Such piety is the salvation of families and states, just
as the impious, which is unpleasing to the gods, is their ruin and
destruction.
SOCRATES: I think that you could have answered in much fewer words the
chief question which I asked, Euthyphro, if you had chosen. But I see
plainly that you are not disposed to instruct me--clearly not: else why,
when we reached the point, did you turn aside? Had you only answered me I
should have truly learned of you by this time the nature of piety. Now, as
the asker of a question is necessarily dependent on the answerer, whither
he leads I must follow; and can only ask again, what is the pious, and what
is piety? Do you mean that they are a sort of science of praying and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: mould is exhausted, and it is compelled to make manure of the
bones of its fathers. There the poet sustains himself merely by
his own superfluous fat, and the philosopher comes down on his
marrow-bones.
It is said to be the task of the American "to work the virgin
soil," and that "agriculture here already assumes proportions
unknown everywhere else." I think that the farmer displaces the
Indian even because he redeems the meadow, and so makes himself
stronger and in some respects more natural. I was surveying for a
man the other day a single straight line one hundred and
thirty-two rods long, through a swamp at whose entrance might
Walking |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Sir John Mandeville: saints, in whose name they be made after. For right as the books
and the scripture of them teach the clerks how and in what manner
they shall believe, right so the images and the paintings teach the
lewd folk to worship the saints and to have them in their mind, in
whose names that the images be made after. They say also, that the
angels of God speak to them in those idols, and that they do many
great miracles. And they say sooth, that there is an angel within
them. For there be two manner of angels, a good and an evil, as
the Greeks say, Cacho and Calo. This Cacho is the wicked angel,
and Calo is the good angel. But the tother is not the good angel,
but the wicked angel that is within the idols to deceive them and
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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 Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: a tiny head with smoothly banded hair of the yellow-carroty tone that
a Roman adores, long, stringy arms, a fairly white skin with reddish
spots upon it, large innocent eyes, and white lashes, scarcely any
brows, a leghorn bonnet bound with white satin and adorned with two
honest bows of the same satin, hands virtuously red, and the feet of
her mother. The faces of these three beings wore, as they looked round
the studio, an air of happiness which bespoke in them a respectable
enthusiasm for Art.
"So it is you, monsieur, who are going to take our likenesses?" said
the father, assuming a jaunty air.
"Yes, monsieur," replied Grassou.
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