| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin: interpreting nature and pictures and architecture, or persuading to
better views those whom he believed to be in error, or arousing, with
the white heat of a prophet's zeal, those whom he knew to be unawakened.
There is indeed a good deal of the prophet about John Ruskin. Though
essentially an interpreter with a singularly fine appreciation of beauty,
no man of the nineteenth century felt more keenly that he had a mission,
and none was more loyal to what he believed that mission to be.
While still in college, what seemed a chance incident gave
occasion and direction to this mission. A certain English reviewer
had ridiculed the work of the artist Turner. Now Ruskin held
Turner to be the greatest landscape painter the world had seen,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: before, by the powerful and singular emotion which marshes cause
in me. This one was dead, dead from cold, since we were walking
on it, in the middle of its population of dried rushes.
Suddenly, at the turn of one of the lanes, I perceived the
ice-hut which had been constructed to shelter us. I went in, and
as we had nearly an hour to wait before the wandering birds would
awake, I rolled myself up in my rug in order to try and get warm.
Then, lying on my back, I began to look at the misshapen moon,
which had four horns through the vaguely transparent walls of
this polar house. But the frost of the frozen marshes, the cold
of these walls, the cold from the firmament penetrated me so
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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 A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: plays as plays, and not as task work? If Shakespear, or for that
matter, Newton and Leibnitz, are allowed to find their readers and
students they will find them. If their works are annotated and
paraphrased by dullards, and the annotations and paraphrases forced on
all young people by imprisonment and flogging and scolding, there will
not be a single man of letters or higher mathematician the more in the
country: on the contrary there will be less, as so many potential
lovers of literature and mathematics will have been incurably
prejudiced against them. Everyone who is conversant with the class in
which child imprisonment and compulsory schooling is carried out to
the final extremity of the university degree knows that its scholastic
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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 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: make no reply, and immediately and in silence withdrew,
determined, that if he persisted in considering her repeated
refusals as flattering encouragement, to apply to her father,
whose negative might be uttered in such a manner as to be
decisive, and whose behavior at least could not be mistaken for
the affectation and coquetry of an elegant female.
Chapter 20
Mr. Collins was not left long to the silent contemplation of his
successful love; for Mrs. Bennet, having dawdled about in the
vestibule to watch for the end of the conference, no sooner saw
Elizabeth open the door and with quick step pass her towards
Pride and Prejudice |
