| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: Dispute not that; York is the worthier.
CARDINAL.
Ambitious Warwick, let thy betters speak.
WARWICK.
The cardinal's not my better in the field.
BUCKINGHAM.
All in this presence are thy betters, Warwick.
WARWICK.
Warwick may live to be the best of all.
SALISBURY.
Peace, son!--and show some reason, Buckingham,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Amazing Interlude by Mary Roberts Rinehart: the bank of a canal watching an ammunition train go by.
Jean backed into a lane and turned the car round. After that Henri got
in and they went rapidly back toward the Front. It was a different
Henri, however, who left the car a mile from the crossroads - a Henri in
the uniform of a French private soldier, one of those odd and
mpracticable uniforms of France during the first year, baggy dark blue
trousers, stiff cap, and the long-tailed coat, its skirts turned back
and faced. Round his neck he wore a knitted scarf, which covered his
chin, and, true to the instinct of the French peasant in a winter
campaign, he wore innumerable undergarments, the red of a jersey showing
through rents in his coat.
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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 Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: self-denial?
The retreating shadows of former sorrows rushed back in a
gloomy train, and seemed to be pictured on the walls of her prison,
magnified by the state of mind in which they were viewed--Still
she mourned for her child, lamented she was a daughter, and
anticipated the aggravated ills of life that her sex rendered almost
inevitable, even while dreading she was no more. To think that
she was blotted out of existence was agony, when the imagination
had been long employed to expand her faculties; yet to suppose her
turned adrift on an unknown sea, was scarcely less afflicting.
After being two days the prey of impetuous, varying emotions,
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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 The Apology by Xenophon: style of the philosopher,[4] which may be taken as a proof that the
language used by Socrates was really of that type. But none of these
writers has brought out clearly the fact that Socrates had come to
regard death as for himself preferable to life; and consequently there
is just a suspicion of foolhardiness in the arrogancy of his
address.[5] We have, however, from the lips of one of his intimate
acquaintances, Hermogenes,[6] the son of Hipponicus, an account of him
which shows the high demeanour in question to have been altogether in
keeping with the master's rational purpose.[7] Hermogenes says that,
seeing Socrates discoursing on every topic rather than that of his
impending trial, he roundly put it to him whether he ought not to be
The Apology |
