| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: The argument has two divisions: There is the hypothesis that
1. One is.
2. One is not.
If one is, it is nothing.
If one is not, it is everything.
But is and is not may be taken in two senses:
Either one is one,
Or, one has being,
from which opposite consequences are deduced,
1.a. If one is one, it is nothing.
1.b. If one has being, it is all things.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: degrees so gradual and with such partiality of loss and of
survival, that her precise state was always and to the end a matter
of dispute. She still remembered her friends; she still loved to
learn news of them upon the slate; she still read and marked the
list of the subscription library; she still took an interest in the
choice of a play for the theatricals, and could remember and find
parallel passages; but alongside of these surviving powers, were
lapses as remarkable, she misbehaved like a child, and a servant
had to sit with her at table. To see her so sitting, speaking with
the tones of a deaf mute not always to the purpose, and to remember
what she had been, was a moving appeal to all who knew her. Such
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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 The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass: the ROOT was fully tested. Long before daylight, I
was called to go and rub, curry, and feed, the horses.
I obeyed, and was glad to obey. But whilst thus
engaged, whilst in the act of throwing down some
blades from the loft, Mr. Covey entered the stable
with a long rope; and just as I was half out of the
loft, he caught hold of my legs, and was about tying
me. As soon as I found what he was up to, I gave
a sudden spring, and as I did so, he holding to my
legs, I was brought sprawling on the stable floor.
Mr. Covey seemed now to think he had me, and
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave |
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 Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: sure, it must have existed in their own hearts first, or they would
never have gone thither. Believe it; be sure of it. No earnest thinker
is a plagiarist pure and simple. He will never borrow from others that
which he has not already, more or less, thought out for himself. When
once a great idea, instinctive, inductive (for the two expressions are
nearer akin than most fancy), has dawned on his soul, he will welcome
lovingly, awfully, any corroboration from foreign schools, and cry with
joy: "Behold, this is not altogether a dream: for others have found it
also. Surely it must be real, universal, eternal." No; be sure there
is far more originality (in the common sense of the word), and far less
(in the true sense of the word), than we fancy; and that it is a paltry
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