| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: Now for the application: a despotic monarch, unless he weds some
foreign bride, is forced to choose a wife from those beneath him, so
that the height of satisfaction is denied him.[35]
[35] Al. "supreme content, the quintessential bliss, is quite unknown
to him."
The tender service of the proudest-souled of women, wifely rendered,
how superlatively charming![36] and by contrast, how little welcome is
such ministration where the wife is but a slave--when present, barely
noticed; or if lacking, what fell pains and passions will it not
engender!
[36] Or, "the gentle ministrations of loftiest-thoughted women and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: THE MAN. Master Warder: is it not a strange thing that we, knowing
that all women are false, should be amazed to find our own particular
drab no better than the rest?
THE BEEFEATER. Not all, sir. Decent bodies, many of them.
THE MAN. _[intolerantly]_ No. All false. All. If thou deny it,
thou liest.
THE BEEFEATER. You judge too much by the Court, sir. There, indeed,
you may say of frailty that its name is woman.
THE MAN. _[pulling out his tablets again]_ Prithee say that again:
that about frailty: the strain of music.
THE BEEFEATER. What strain of music, sir? I'm no musician, God
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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 Reef by Edith Wharton: the hearth and watch her quiet movements, and the way the
bluish lustre on her hair purpled a little as she bent above
the fire.
A carriage drove out of the court as he entered it, and in
the hall his vision was dispelled by the exceedingly
substantial presence of a lady in a waterproof and a tweed
hat, who stood firmly planted in the centre of a pile of
luggage, as to which she was giving involved but lucid
directions to the footman who had just admitted her. She
went on with these directions regardless of Darrow's
entrance, merely fixing her small pale eyes on him while she
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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 Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: with the common dust of life, who crossed his daily path, and the
little child who played in it, were glorified if he beheld them
in his mood of poetic faith. He showed the golden links of the
great chain that intertwined them with an angelic kindred; he
brought out the hidden traits of a celestial birth that made them
worthy of such kin. Some, indeed, there were, who thought to show
the soundness of their judgment by affirming that all the beauty
and dignity of the natural world existed only in the poet's
fancy. Let such men speak for themselves, who undoubtedly appear
to have been spawned forth by Nature with a contemptuous
bitterness; she having plastered them up out of her refuse stuff,
The Snow Image |
