| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: simplicity, and with a view to its translation into a different one
subsequently, let us adopt for a moment the provisional conception
of a mixed fluid in the wire, composed of positive and negative
electricities in equal quantities, and therefore perfectly
neutralizing each other when the wire is still. By the motion of
the wire, say with the hand, towards the magnet, what the Germans
call a Scheidungs-Kraft--a separating force--is brought into play.
This force tears the mixed fluids asunder, and drives them in two
currents, the one positive and the other negative, in two opposite
directions through the wire. The presence of these currents evokes
a force of repulsion between the magnet and the wire; and to cause
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: 18. To deal fairly with such arguments, they should be translated as far
as possible into their modern equivalents. 'If the ideas of men are
eternal, their souls are eternal, and if not the ideas, then not the
souls.' Such an argument stands nearly in the same relation to Plato and
his age, as the argument from the existence of God to immortality among
ourselves. 'If God exists, then the soul exists after death; and if there
is no God, there is no existence of the soul after death.' For the ideas
are to his mind the reality, the truth, the principle of permanence, as
well as of intelligence and order in the world. When Simmias and Cebes say
that they are more strongly persuaded of the existence of ideas than they
are of the immortality of the soul, they represent fairly enough the order
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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 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne:
defeasible rights against the world, and was ready to defend them
to the death.
"God gave me the child!" cried she. "He gave her in requital of
all things else which ye had taken from me. She is my happiness
-- she is my torture, none the less! Pearl keeps me here in
life! Pearl punishes me, too! See ye not, she is the scarlet
letter, only capable of being loved, and so endowed with a
The Scarlet Letter |
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 School For Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan: is now printed in this volume. This version differs in many
respects from that which is generally known, and I think it is
even better than that which has hitherto been read and acted.
As I have endeavoured to reproduce the works of Sheridan as he
wrote them, I may be told that he was a bad hand at punctuating
and very bad at spelling. . . . But Sheridan's shortcomings as a
speller have been exaggerated." Lest "Sheridan's shortcomings"
either in spelling or in punctuation should obscure the text,
I have, in this edition, inserted in brackets some explanatory
suggestions. It has seemed best, also, to adopt a uniform method
for indicating stage-directions and abbreviations of the names of
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