| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw: against censorships in a nutshell.
It will be asked whether theatrical managers are to be allowed to
produce what they like, without regard to the public interest.
But that is not the alternative. The managers of our London
music-halls are not subject to any censorship. They produce
their entertainments on their own responsibility, and have no
two-guinea certificates to plead if their houses are conducted
viciously. They know that if they lose their character, the
County Council will simply refuse to renew their license at the
end of the year; and nothing in the history of popular art is
more amazing than the improvement in music-halls that this simple
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: hypotheses of the one and many have been regarded by some as transcendental
mysteries; by others as a mere illustration, taken at random, of a new
method. They seem to have been inspired by a sort of dialectical frenzy,
such as may be supposed to have prevailed in the Megarian School (compare
Cratylus, etc.). The criticism on his own doctrine of Ideas has also been
considered, not as a real criticism, but as an exuberance of the
metaphysical imagination which enabled Plato to go beyond himself. To the
latter part of the dialogue we may certainly apply the words in which he
himself describes the earlier philosophers in the Sophist: 'They went on
their way rather regardless of whether we understood them or not.'
The Parmenides in point of style is one of the best of the Platonic
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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 The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: made no resistance. He had really not enough fortitude in him just
then to tell her to keep back. But he inquired in a cavernous,
strange tone: "Was he asleep?"
"No," she cried, and went on rapidly. "He wasn't. Not he. He had
been telling me that nothing could touch him. After taking the boy
away from under my very eyes to kill him - the loving, innocent,
harmless lad. My own, I tell you. He was lying on the couch quite
easy - after killing the boy - my boy. I would have gone on the
streets to get out of his sight. And he says to me like this:
`Come here,' after telling me I had helped to kill the boy. You
hear, Tom? He says like this: `Come here,' after taking my very
The Secret Agent |
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 Spirit of the Border by Zane Grey: to meet her sweetheart. I was ag'in her comin' all along, an' fust off I said
'No." But when I seen tears in her blue eyes, an' she puts her little hand on
mine, I jest wilted, an' says to Jim Blair, 'She goes.' Wal, jest as might
hev' been expected--an' fact is I looked fer it--we wus tackled by redskins.
Somehow, Jim Girty got wind of us hevin' a lass aboard, an' he ketched up with
us jest below here. It's a bad place, called Shawnee Rock, an' I'll show it to
ye termorrer. The renegade, with his red devils, attacked us thar, an' we had
a time gittin' away. Milly wus shot. She lived fer awhile, a couple of days,
an' all the time wus so patient, an' sweet, an' brave with thet renegade's
bullet in her--fer he shot her when he seen he couldn't capture her--thet thar
wusn't a blame man of us who wouldn't hev died to grant her prayer, which wus
The Spirit of the Border |
