| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: sacrifice of victory.
Then it must have been a long while ago, he said; and who told you--did
Socrates?
No indeed, I replied, but the same person who told Phoenix;--he was a
little fellow, who never wore any shoes, Aristodemus, of the deme of
Cydathenaeum. He had been at Agathon's feast; and I think that in those
days there was no one who was a more devoted admirer of Socrates.
Moreover, I have asked Socrates about the truth of some parts of his
narrative, and he confirmed them. Then, said Glaucon, let us have the tale
over again; is not the road to Athens just made for conversation? And so
we walked, and talked of the discourses on love; and therefore, as I said
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds.
...
Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.'
But this true love of the mind cannot exist between two souls, until they
are purified from the grossness of earthly passion: they must pass through
a time of trial and conflict first; in the language of religion they must
be converted or born again. Then they would see the world transformed into
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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 A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: time of the murder?" The stranger answered in the negative, but
his face betrayed his uneasiness. "Do you know you're rather
like him?" said the woman, in a half-joking way. The stranger
laughed, and shortly after went out, saying he would return. He
did return on May 15, bringing with him a number of the
Republique Illustree that contained an almost
unrecognisable portrait of Eyraud. He said he had picked it up
in a cafe. "What a blackguard he looks!" he exclaimed as he
threw the paper on the table. But the dressmaker's suspicions
were not allayed by the stranger's uncomplimentary reference to
the murderer. As soon as he had gone, she went to the French
A Book of Remarkable Criminals |
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 Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: skylarks, on the bleakest northern moor as cheerfully as on the sunny
hills of Greece, and rise thence singing into the heaven of heavens, yet
they are hard to tempt into a gilded cage, however amusingly made and
plentifully stored with comforts. Royal societies, associations of
savants, and the like, are good for many things, but not for the
breeding of art and genius: for they are things which cannot be bred.
Such institutions are excellent for physical science, when, as among us
now, physical science is going on the right method: but where, as in
Alexandria, it was going on an utterly wrong method, they stereotype the
errors of the age, and invest them with the prestige of authority, and
produce mere Sorbonnes, and schools of pedants. To literature, too,
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