| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: Plato, are undoubtedly genuine. There is another portion of them,
including the Epistles, the Epinomis, the dialogues rejected by the
ancients themselves, namely, the Axiochus, De justo, De virtute, Demodocus,
Sisyphus, Eryxias, which on grounds, both of internal and external
evidence, we are able with equal certainty to reject. But there still
remains a small portion of which we are unable to affirm either that they
are genuine or spurious. They may have been written in youth, or possibly
like the works of some painters, may be partly or wholly the compositions
of pupils; or they may have been the writings of some contemporary
transferred by accident to the more celebrated name of Plato, or of some
Platonist in the next generation who aspired to imitate his master. Not
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: deathless gods that are from everlasting, and in chief to
the grey eyed daughter of Zeus. So all night long and
through the dawn the ship cleft her way.
Book III
Nestor entertains Telemachus at Pylos and tells him how the
Greeks departed from Troy; and sends him for further
information to Sparta.
Now the sun arose and left the lovely mere, speeding to the
brazen heaven, to give light to the immortals and to mortal
men on the earth, the graingiver, and they reached Pylos,
the stablished castle of Neleus. There the people were
The Odyssey |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories by Alice Dunbar: away from a pinched, pitiful face, whose dull cold eyes hurt you,
because you knew they were trying to mirror sorrow, and could not
because of their expressionless quality. No matter what the
weather or what her other toilet, she always wore a thin little
shawl of dingy brick-dust hue about her shoulders. No matter
what the occasion or what the day, she always carried her
knitting with her, and seldom ceased the incessant twist, twist
of the shining steel among the white cotton meshes. She might
put down the needles and lace into the spool-box long enough to
open oysters, or wrap up fruit and candy, or count out wood and
coal into infinitesimal portions, or do her housework; but the
The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories |
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 Walking by Henry David Thoreau: setting sun lighting up the opposite side of a stately pine wood.
Its golden rays straggled into the aisles of the wood as into
some noble hall. I was impressed as if some ancient and
altogether admirable and shining family had settled there in that
part of the land called Concord, unknown to me--to whom the sun
was servant--who had not gone into society in the village--who
had not been called on. I saw their park, their pleasure-ground,
beyond through the wood, in Spaulding's cranberry-meadow. The
pines furnished them with gables as they grew. Their house was
not obvious to vision; the trees grew through it. I do not know
whether I heard the sounds of a suppressed hilarity or not. They
Walking |
