| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare: Who doth the world so gloriously behold,
That cedar-tops and hills seem burnish'd gold.
Venus salutes him with this fair good morrow:
'O thou clear god, and patron of all light, 860
From whom each lamp and shining star doth borrow
The beauteous influence that makes him bright,
There lives a son that suck'd an earthly mother,
May lend thee light, as thou dost lend to other'
This said, she hasteth to a myrtle grove, 865
Musing the morning is so much o'erworn,
And yet she hears no tidings of her love;
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: behold the vision of the eternal (compare Symp. (Greek) Republic (Greek)
also Phaedrus). Under one aspect 'the idea is love'; under another,
'truth.' In both the lover of wisdom is the 'spectator of all time and of
all existence.' This is a 'mystery' in which Plato also obscurely
intimates the union of the spiritual and fleshly, the interpenetration of
the moral and intellectual faculties.
The divine image of beauty which resides within Socrates has been revealed;
the Silenus, or outward man, has now to be exhibited. The description of
Socrates follows immediately after the speech of Socrates; one is the
complement of the other. At the height of divine inspiration, when the
force of nature can no further go, by way of contrast to this extreme
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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 King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: King did I call thee? no, thou art not king,
Not fit to govern and rule multitudes,
Which dar'st not, no, nor canst not rule a traitor.
That head of thine doth not become a crown;
Thy hand is made to grasp a palmer's staff,
And not to grace an awful princely sceptre.
That gold must round engirt these brows of mine,
Whose smile and frown, like to Achilles' spear,
Is able with the change to kill and cure.
Here is a hand to hold a sceptre up
And with the same to act controlling laws.
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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 Exiles by Honore de Balzac: broad faces were there, with prominent brows and venerable beards,
which fill us with a sort of pious respect for our ancestors when we
see their portraits from the Middle Ages. Lean faces, too, with
burning, sunken eyes, under bald heads yellow from the labors of
futile scholasticism, contrasted with young and eager countenances,
grave faces, warlike faces, and the ruddy cheeks of the financial
class.
These lectures, dissertations, theses, sustained by the brightest
geniuses of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, roused our
forefathers to enthusiasm. They were to them their bull-fights, their
Italian opera, their tragedy, their dancers; in short, all their
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