| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: own, you must find some other gibe, for they certainly, as you yourself
allow, show an inclination to be on the move.
EUTHYPHRO: Nay, Socrates, I shall still say that you are the Daedalus who
sets arguments in motion; not I, certainly, but you make them move or go
round, for they would never have stirred, as far as I am concerned.
SOCRATES: Then I must be a greater than Daedalus: for whereas he only
made his own inventions to move, I move those of other people as well. And
the beauty of it is, that I would rather not. For I would give the wisdom
of Daedalus, and the wealth of Tantalus, to be able to detain them and keep
them fixed. But enough of this. As I perceive that you are lazy, I will
myself endeavour to show you how you might instruct me in the nature of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: And whether, likewise, any end shall be
How far the ramparts of the world can still
Outstand this strain of ever-roused motion,
Or whether, divinely with eternal weal
Endowed, they can through endless tracts of age
Glide on, defying the o'er-mighty powers
Of the immeasurable ages. Lo,
What man is there whose mind with dread of gods
Cringes not close, whose limbs with terror-spell
Crouch not together, when the parched earth
Quakes with the horrible thunderbolt amain,
Of The Nature of Things |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain: He came home with his manners a good deal improved; he had lost his
surliness and brusqueness, and was rather pleasantly soft and smooth, now;
he was furtively, and sometimes openly, ironical of speech, and given
to gently touching people on the raw, but he did it with a good-natured
semiconscious air that carried it off safely, and kept him from getting
into trouble. He was as indolent as ever and showed no very strenuous
desire to hunt up an occupation. People argued from this that he
preferred to be supported by his uncle until his uncle's shoes should
become vacant. He brought back one or two new habits with him,
one of which he rather openly practiced--tippling--but concealed another,
which was gambling. It would not do to gamble where his uncle could
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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 Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: specimens of Aryan literature, save perhaps the hymns of the
Rig-Veda and the sacred books of the Avesta.
The apparent difficulty of preserving such long poems for
three or four centuries without the aid of writing may seem at
first sight to justify the hypothesis of Wolf, that they are
mere collections of ancient ballads, like those which make up
the Mahabharata, preserved in the memories of a dozen or
twenty bards, and first arranged under the orders of
Peisistratos. But on a careful examination this hypothesis is
seen to raise more difficulties than it solves. What was there
in the position of Peisistratos, or of Athens itself in the
Myths and Myth-Makers |
