| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Bucky O'Connor by William MacLeod Raine: and Mick's frank open eyes accused him of idiocy for ever having
supposed that this lad was a woman. Why, he was a little fellow
not over fifteen--not a day past fifteen, he would swear to that.
He was, to be sure, a slender, girlish young fellow, a good deal
of a sissy by the look of him, but none the less a sure enough
boy. Convinced of this, the big Irishman dismissed him promptly
from his thoughts and devoted himself to Bucky.
"And what are yez doing down in greaser land? Thought you was
rustling cows for a living somewheres in sunburnt Arizona," he
grinned amiably.
"Me? Oh, I came down on business. We'll talk about that
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: inconsistently in the construction of the world, Plato, in the Philebus,
the Sophist, and the Laws, extends to all things, attributing to Providence
a care, infinitesimal as well as infinite, of all creation. The divine
mind is the leading religious thought of the later works of Plato. The
human mind is a sort of reflection of this, having ideas of Being,
Sameness, and the like. At times they seem to be parted by a great gulf
(Parmenides); at other times they have a common nature, and the light of a
common intelligence.
But this ever-growing idea of mind is really irreconcilable with the
abstract Pantheism of the Eleatics. To the passionate language of
Parmenides, Plato replies in a strain equally passionate:--What! has not
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy:
us," he said to some one when the boy was gone. Which of us
would have expressed himself like that? You see, he did not say
to "get" or to "break off," but to "bite off," which was right,
because they did literally "bite" off the chalk from the lump
with their teeth, and not break it off.
THE SERVANTS IN THE HOUSE
WHEN my father married and brought home his young and
inexperienced bride, Sófya Andréyevna, to
Yásnaya Polyána, Nikolái
Mikháilovitch Rumyántsef was already established as
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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 Door in the Wall, et. al. by H. G. Wells: gorges and over an icy pass into its equable meadows, and thither
indeed men came, a family or so of Peruvian half-breeds fleeing
from the lust and tyranny of an evil Spanish ruler. Then came the
stupendous outbreak of Mindobamba, when it was night in Quito for
seventeen days, and the water was boiling at Yaguachi and all the
fish floating dying even as far as Guayaquil; everywhere along the
Pacific slopes there were land-slips and swift thawings and sudden
floods, and one whole side of the old Arauca crest slipped and came
down in thunder, and cut off the Country of the Blind for ever from
the exploring feet of men. But one of these early settlers had
chanced to be on the hither side of the gorges when the world had
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