| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Symposium by Xenophon: That's true, upon my life! (exclaimed the jester). One needs but look
at you to see there's not a dram of difference between legs and
shoulders.[41] I'll be bound, if both were weighed in the scales
apart, like "tops and bottoms," the clerks of the market[42] would let
you off scot-free.
[41] Lit. "your legs are equal in weight with your shoulders." Cf.
"Od." xviii. 373, {elikes . . . isophoroi boes}, "of equal age and
force to bear the yoke."--Butcher and Lang.
[42] See Boeckh, "Public Economy of Athens," p. 48; Aristoph.
"Acharn." 723; Lys. 165, 34.
Then Callias: O Socrates, do please invite me when you begin your
The Symposium |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: learned of the multitude. Why, he asks, should he not learn of them the
nature of justice, as he has learned the Greek language of them? To this
Socrates answers, that they can teach Greek, but they cannot teach justice;
for they are agreed about the one, but they are not agreed about the other:
and therefore Alcibiades, who has admitted that if he knows he must either
have learned from a master or have discovered for himself the nature of
justice, is convicted out of his own mouth.
Alcibiades rejoins, that the Athenians debate not about what is just, but
about what is expedient; and he asserts that the two principles of justice
and expediency are opposed. Socrates, by a series of questions, compels
him to admit that the just and the expedient coincide. Alcibiades is thus
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: three lands crowded with confused images that girlish head, august in
its cold guilelessness, its native chastity, but from which there
sprang full-armed, brilliant, sincere, and strong, an overwhelming
admiration for genius. To Modeste a new book was an event; a
masterpiece that would have horrified Madame Latournelle made her
happy,--equally unhappy if the great work did not play havoc with her
heart. A lyric instinct bubbled in that girlish soul, so full of the
beautiful illusions of its youth. But of this radiant existence not a
gleam reached the surface of daily life; it escaped the ken of Dumay
and his wife and the Latournelles; the ears of the blind mother alone
caught the crackling of its flame.
Modeste Mignon |
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 Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: before them, they realized that fate had been most cruelly
unkind, for the Cowrie was already under sail and moving
slowly out of the mouth of the harbour into the open sea.
What were they to do? Tarzan's broad chest rose and fell
to the force of his pent emotions. The last blow seemed to
have fallen, and if ever in all his life Tarzan of the Apes had
had occasion to abandon hope it was now that he saw the ship
bearing his wife to some frightful fate moving gracefully over
the rippling water, so very near and yet so hideously far away.
In silence he stood watching the vessel. He saw it turn
toward the east and finally disappear around a headland on
The Beasts of Tarzan |
