| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: MENO: Yes.
SOCRATES: And now, as Pindar says, 'read my meaning:'--colour is an
effluence of form, commensurate with sight, and palpable to sense.
MENO: That, Socrates, appears to me to be an admirable answer.
SOCRATES: Why, yes, because it happens to be one which you have been in
the habit of hearing: and your wit will have discovered, I suspect, that
you may explain in the same way the nature of sound and smell, and of many
other similar phenomena.
MENO: Quite true.
SOCRATES: The answer, Meno, was in the orthodox solemn vein, and therefore
was more acceptable to you than the other answer about figure.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: then said, casually--as if returning to a minor subject:
"You were very anxious to give up your mate to the shore people, I believe?"
He was. To the law. His obscure tenacity on that point had in it
something incomprehensible and a little awful; something, as it
were, mystical, quite apart from his anxiety that he should
not be suspected of "countenancing any doings of that sort."
Seven-and-thirty virtuous years at sea, of which over twenty
of immaculate command, and the last fifteen in the Sephora,
seemed to have laid him under some pitiless obligation.
"And you know," he went on, groping shame-facedly amongst his feelings,
"I did not engage that young fellow. His people had some
The Secret Sharer |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: With this gigantic evil in the land, we are constantly told to
look _at home;_ if we say ought against crowned heads, we are
pointed to our enslaved millions; if we talk of sending
missionaries and bibles abroad, we are pointed to three millions
now lying in worse than heathen darkness; if we express a word of
sympathy for Kossuth and his Hungarian fugitive brethren, we are
pointed to that horrible and hell-black enactment, "the fugitive
slave bill."
Slavery blunts the edge of all our rebukes of tyranny abroad--the
criticisms that we make upon other nations, only call forth
ridicule, contempt, and scorn. In a word, we are made a reproach
My Bondage and My Freedom |
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 Odyssey by Homer: Then they sent a servant to tell Penelope that Telemachus had
gone into the country, but had sent the ship to the town to
prevent her from being alarmed and made unhappy. This servant
and Eumaeus happened to meet when they were both on the same
errand of going to tell Penelope. When they reached the House,
the servant stood up and said to the queen in the presence of
the waiting women, "Your son, Madam, is now returned from
Pylos"; but Eumaeus went close up to Penelope, and said
privately all that her son had bidden him tell her. When he had
given his message he left the house with its outbuildings and
went back to his pigs again.
The Odyssey |
