| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Macbeth by William Shakespeare: And Honor
King. Welcome hither:
I haue begun to plant thee, and will labour
To make thee full of growing. Noble Banquo,
That hast no lesse deseru'd, nor must be knowne
No lesse to haue done so: Let me enfold thee,
And hold thee to my Heart
Banq. There if I grow,
The Haruest is your owne
King. My plenteous Ioyes,
Wanton in fulnesse, seeke to hide themselues
Macbeth |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: at my father's paying so little attention to me and the rest of
those about him and being so absorbed in the thought of
Gúsef.
I willingly acknowledge that I was wrong in entertaining this
narrow-minded feeling. If I had entered fully into what my father
was feeling, I should have seen this at the time.
As far back as 1896, in consequence of the arrest of a doctor,
Miss N----, in Tula, my father wrote a long letter to Muravyof, the
Minister of Justice, in which he spoke of the "unreasonableness,
uselessness, and cruelty of the measures
¹The curious may be disposed to trace to some such
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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 Lysis by Plato: half the truth, and in this particular instance are not much improved upon
by the philosophers), to a more comprehensive notion of friendship. This,
however, is far from being cleared of its perplexity. Two notions appear
to be struggling or balancing in the mind of Socrates:--First, the sense
that friendship arises out of human needs and wants; Secondly, that the
higher form or ideal of friendship exists only for the sake of the good.
That friends are not necessarily either like or unlike, is also a truth
confirmed by experience. But the use of the terms 'like' or 'good' is too
strictly limited; Socrates has allowed himself to be carried away by a sort
of eristic or illogical logic against which no definition of friendship
would be able to stand. In the course of the argument he makes a
Lysis |
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 Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: might be expected from the name; in half a minute she was
clambering round and round among some boulders, as lost a donkey as
you would wish to see. I should have camped long before had I been
properly provided; but as this was to be so short a stage, I had
brought no wine, no bread for myself, and little over a pound for
my lady friend. Add to this, that I and Modestine were both
handsomely wetted by the showers. But now, if I could have found
some water, I should have camped at once in spite of all. Water,
however, being entirely absent, except in the form of rain, I
determined to return to Fouzilhic, and ask a guide a little farther
on my way - 'a little farther lend thy guiding hand.'
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