| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: not be always walking from one room to the other,
and doing the lookings-on at your ease, in this way;
I want you here. I have been slaving myself till I
can hardly stand, to contrive Mr. Rushworth's cloak
without sending for any more satin; and now I think
you may give me your help in putting it together.
There are but three seams; you may do them in a trice.
It would be lucky for me if I had nothing but the executive
part to do. _You_ are best off, I can tell you:
but if nobody did more than _you_, we should not get on
very fast"
Mansfield Park |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: give outward expression to his purpose--to establish, as it were,
a moral alibi--swept the letters into a heap and carried them
toward the grate. But it would have taken too long to burn all
the packets. He turned back to the table and one by one fitted
the pages into their envelopes; then he tied up the letters and
put them back into the locked drawer.
III
It was one of the laws of Glennard's intercourse with Miss Trent
that he always went to see her the day after he had resolved to
give her up. There was a special charm about the moments thus
snatched from the jaws of renunciation; and his sense of their
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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 Lesser Hippias by Plato: Epistles are spurious, as that the Republic, the Timaeus, and the Laws are
genuine.
On the whole, not a twentieth part of the writings which pass under the
name of Plato, if we exclude the works rejected by the ancients themselves
and two or three other plausible inventions, can be fairly doubted by those
who are willing to allow that a considerable change and growth may have
taken place in his philosophy (see above). That twentieth debatable
portion scarcely in any degree affects our judgment of Plato, either as a
thinker or a writer, and though suggesting some interesting questions to
the scholar and critic, is of little importance to the general reader.
LESSER HIPPIAS
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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 Caesar's Commentaries in Latin by Julius Caesar: sese castris tenebant. Hac re perspecta Crassus, cum sua cunctatione
atque opinione timoris hostes nostros milites alacriores ad pugnaudum
effecissent atque omnium voces audirentur expectari diutius non oportere
quin ad castra iretur, cohortatus suos omnibus cupientibus ad hostium
castra contendit.
Ibi cum alii fossas complerent, alii multis telis coniectis defensores
vallo munitionibusque depellerent, auxiliaresque, quibus ad pugnam non
multum Crassus confidebat, lapidibus telisque subministrandis et ad
aggerem caespitibus comportandis speciem atque opinionem pugnantium
praeberent, cum item ab hostibus constanter ac non timide pugnaretur
telaque ex loco superiore missa non frustra acciderent, equites circumitis
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