| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The School For Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan: SERVANT. Mr. Crabtree and Sir Benjamin Backbite.
LADY SNEERWELL. Soh! Maria, you see your lover pursues you--
Positively you shan't escape.
Enter CRABTREE and SIR BENJAMIN BACKBITE
CRABTREE. Lady Sneerwell, I kiss your hand. Mrs. Candour I don't
believe you are acquainted with my Nephew Sir Benjamin Backbite--
Egad, Ma'am, He has a pretty wit--and is a pretty Poet too isn't He
Lady Sneerwell?
SIR BENJAMIN. O fie, Uncle!
CRABTREE. Nay egad it's true--I back him at a Rebus or a Charade
against the best Rhymer in the Kingdom--has your Ladyship heard
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. Wells: were, as the reader will remember, unsuccessful. But through all
of them he was concentrating all his power and will upon getting
out of the body--"willing it with all my might," he says. At last,
almost against expectation, came success. And Mr. Bessel asserts that
he, being alive, did actually, by an effort of will, leave his body
and pass into some place or state outside this world.
The release was, he asserts, instantaneous. "At one moment I was
seated in my chair, with my eyes tightly shut, my hands gripping
the arms of the chair, doing all I could to concentrate my mind
on Vincey, and then I perceived myself outside my body--saw my body
near me, but certainly not containing me, with the hands relaxing
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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 This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: Love for the dusk ... Love for the glistening after;
Quiet the trees to their last tops ... serene...
Faint winds, and far away a fading laughter..."
BOOK TWO
The Education of a Personage
CHAPTER 4
The Supercilious Sacrifice
ATLANTIC CITY. Amory paced the board walk at day's end, lulled by
the everlasting surge of changing waves, smelling the
half-mournful odor of the salt breeze. The sea, he thought, had
treasured its memories deeper than the faithless land. It seemed
This Side of Paradise |
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 Charmides by Plato: several passages plagiarized from him, but flagrantly at variance with
historical fact. It will be seen also that I do not agree with Mr. Grote's
views about the Sophists; nor with the low estimate which he has formed of
Plato's Laws; nor with his opinion respecting Plato's doctrine of the
rotation of the earth. But I 'am not going to lay hands on my father
Parmenides' (Soph.), who will, I hope, forgive me for differing from him on
these points. I cannot close this Preface without expressing my deep
respect for his noble and gentle character, and the great services which he
has rendered to Greek Literature.
Balliol College,
January, 1871.
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