| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Riverman by Stewart Edward White: negative new and ingenious schemes.
"No, boys," said he, "I want to keep on the right side of the law.
We may need it later."
Meanwhile the entire length of the river was busy and excited.
Heinzman's logs were all blazed inside a week. The men passed the
hatchets along the line, and slim chance did a marked log have of
rescue once the poor thing fell into difficulties. With the strange
and interesting tendency rivermen and woodsmen have of personifying
the elements of their daily work, the men addressed the helpless
timbers in tones of contempt.
"Thought you'd ride that rock, you ---- ---- ----," said they, "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 Meno by Plato: Socrates himself appears to be conscious of their weakness; for he adds
immediately afterwards, 'I have said some things of which I am not
altogether confident.' (Compare Phaedo.) It may be observed, however,
that the fanciful notion of pre-existence is combined with a true but
partial view of the origin and unity of knowledge, and of the association
of ideas. Knowledge is prior to any particular knowledge, and exists not
in the previous state of the individual, but of the race. It is potential,
not actual, and can only be appropriated by strenuous exertion.
The idealism of Plato is here presented in a less developed form than in
the Phaedo and Phaedrus. Nothing is said of the pre-existence of ideas of
justice, temperance, and the like. Nor is Socrates positive of anything
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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 Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: shone, she having passed through all anterior trials. After the death,
that is, the transformation of the prophet, the baron came to Jarvis
to accomplish his celestial nuptials with the observances of Prayer.
As for me, who am not a Seer, I have only known the terrestrial works
of this couple. Their lives were those of saints whose virtues are the
glory of the Roman Church. They ameliorated the condition of our
people; they supplied them all with means in return for work,--little,
perhaps, but enough for all their wants. Those who lived with them in
constant intercourse never saw them show a sign of anger or
impatience; they were constantly beneficent and gentle, full of
courtesy and loving-kindness; their marriage was the harmony of two
Seraphita |
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 Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: modern life can give: taking from the one its clearness of vision
and its sustained calm, from the other its variety of expression
and the mystery of its vision. For what, as Goethe said, is the
study of the ancients but a return to the real world (for that is
what they did); and what, said Mazzini, is mediaevalism but
individuality?
It is really from the union of Hellenism, in its breadth, its
sanity of purpose, its calm possession of beauty, with the
adventive, the intensified individualism, the passionate colour of
the romantic spirit, that springs the art of the nineteenth century
in England, as from the marriage of Faust and Helen of Troy sprang
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