| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: medicine which is concerned with the inspection of health equally in all
times, present, past, and future; and one science of husbandry in like
manner, which is concerned with the productions of the earth in all times.
As to the art of the general, you yourselves will be my witnesses that he
has an excellent foreknowledge of the future, and that he claims to be the
master and not the servant of the soothsayer, because he knows better what
is happening or is likely to happen in war: and accordingly the law places
the soothsayer under the general, and not the general under the soothsayer.
Am I not correct in saying so, Laches?
LACHES: Quite correct.
SOCRATES: And do you, Nicias, also acknowledge that the same science has
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Poems by Oscar Wilde: And let dull failure be my vestiture,
And sorrow dig its grave within my heart.
Perchance it may be better so - at least
I have not made my heart a heart of stone,
Nor starved my boyhood of its goodly feast,
Nor walked where Beauty is a thing unknown.
Many a man hath done so; sought to fence
In straitened bonds the soul that should be free,
Trodden the dusty road of common sense,
While all the forest sang of liberty,
Not marking how the spotted hawk in flight
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: blown off at the top, the hands still moving. He heard the loud cry of the
native women and children as they turned the maxims on to the kraal; and
then he heard the dynamite explode that blew up a cave. Then again he was
working a maxim gun, but it seemed to him it was more like the reaping
machine he used to work in England, and that what was going down before it
was not yellow corn, but black men's heads; and he thought when he looked
back they lay behind him in rows, like the corn in sheaves.
The logs sent up a flame clear and high, and, where they split, showed a
burning core inside: the cracking and spluttering sounded in his brain
like the discharge of a battery of artillery. Then he thought suddenly of
a black woman he and another man caught alone in the bush, her baby on her
|
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 Time Machine by H. G. Wells: wholesome meat, and opened the door on you. You know the rest.
I washed, and dined, and now I am telling you the story.
`I know,' he said, after a pause, `that all this will be
absolutely incredible to you. To me the one incredible thing is
that I am here to-night in this old familiar room looking into
your friendly faces and telling you these strange adventures.'
He looked at the Medical Man. `No. I cannot expect you to
believe it. Take it as a lie--or a prophecy. Say I dreamed it
in the workshop. Consider I have been speculating upon the
destinies of our race until I have hatched this fiction. Treat
my assertion of its truth as a mere stroke of art to enhance its
The Time Machine |
