| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: separated from like or the better from the worse.
THEAETETUS: I see now what you mean.
STRANGER: There is no name for the first kind of separation; of the
second, which throws away the worse and preserves the better, I do know a
name.
THEAETETUS: What is it?
STRANGER: Every discernment or discrimination of that kind, as I have
observed, is called a purification.
THEAETETUS: Yes, that is the usual expression.
STRANGER: And any one may see that purification is of two kinds.
THEAETETUS: Perhaps so, if he were allowed time to think; but I do not see
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe: gets a bad husband, and she is never married too late who gets
a good one; in a word, there is no woman, deformity or lost
reputation excepted, but if she manages well, may be married
safely one time or other; but if she precipitates herself, it is ten
thousand to one but she is undone.
But I come now to my own case, in which there was at this
time no little nicety. The circumstances I was in made the
offer of a good husband the most necessary thing in the world
to me, but I found soon that to be made cheap and easy was
not the way. It soon began to be found that the widow had
no fortune, and to say this was to say all that was ill of me,
Moll Flanders |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells: repeated it, and went on to imagine herself doing acts of
tragically dog-like devotion to the biologist, who, for the
purposes of the drama, remained entirely unconscious of and
indifferent to her proceedings.
At last some anodyne formed itself from these exercises, and,
with eyelashes wet with such feeble tears as only
three-o'clock-in-the-morning pathos can distil, she fell asleep.
Part 5
Pursuant to some altogether private calculations she did not go
up to the Imperial College until after mid-day, and she found the
laboratory deserted, even as she desired. She went to the table
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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 Dreams by Olive Schreiner: Then came another, green and gold, who sang in a shrill voice, like one
crying in the marketplace,--"Reward after Death! Reward after Death!"
And he said--
"You are not so fair; but you are fair too," and he took it.
And others came, brightly coloured, singing pleasant songs, till all the
grains were finished. And the hunter gathered all his birds together, and
built a strong iron cage called a new creed, and put all his birds in it.
Then the people came about dancing and singing.
"Oh, happy hunter!" they cried. "Oh, wonderful man! Oh, delightful birds!
Oh, lovely songs!"
No one asked where the birds had come from, nor how they had been caught;
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