| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Hermione's Little Group of Serious Thinkers by Don Marquis: Isn't it wonderful how the Hindus find these
things out?
Soul speaking to soul, I suppose.
But I have scarcely been able to eat comfortably
since I read it.
Every time I sit down to a salad it makes me
feel quite like a cannibal!
And to think, I was just on the point of becoming
a vegetarian, too!
I suppose to be on the safe side one should eat
nothing but minerals.
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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: hardly thought of air and water, the importance of which was well
understood by the ancients; as Aristotle remarks, 'Air and water, being the
elements which we most use, have the greatest effect upon health' (Polit.).
For ages physicians have been under the dominion of prejudices which have
only recently given way; and now there are as many opinions in medicine as
in theology, and an equal degree of scepticism and some want of toleration
about both. Plato has several good notions about medicine; according to
him, 'the eye cannot be cured without the rest of the body, nor the body
without the mind' (Charm.). No man of sense, he says in the Timaeus, would
take physic; and we heartily sympathize with him in the Laws when he
declares that 'the limbs of the rustic worn with toil will derive more
The Republic |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Talisman by Walter Scott: of the devil himself."
De Vaux, right glad, if the truth may be guessed, that the scene
ended without Richard's descending to the unkingly act of himself
slaying an unresisting prisoner, made haste to remove Sir Kenneth
by a private issue to a separate tent, where he was disarmed, and
put in fetters for security. De Vaux looked on with a steady and
melancholy attention, while the provost's officers, to whom Sir
Kenneth was now committed, took these severe precautions.
When they were ended, he said solemnly to the unhappy criminal,
"It is King Richard's pleasure that you die undegraded--without
mutilation of your body, Or Shame to your arms--and that your
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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 Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: express the individual; or who perhaps were only blinded and
silenced by generous admiration, such as I partly envy for myself -
such as you, if your soul were enlightened, would envy on your
bended knees. It is the least defect of such a method of
portraiture that it makes the path easy for the devil's advocate,
and leaves the misuse of the slanderer a considerable field of
truth. For the truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest
weapon of the enemy. The world, in your despite, may perhaps owe
you something, if your letter be the means of substituting once for
all a credible likeness for a wax abstraction. For, if that world
at all remember you, on the day when Damien of Molokai shall be
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