| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Lover's Complaint by William Shakespeare: Thought characters and words, merely but art,
And bastards of his foul adulterate heart.
'And long upon these terms I held my city,
Till thus he 'gan besiege me: Gentle maid,
Have of my suffering youth some feeling pity,
And be not of my holy vows afraid:
That's to you sworn, to none was ever said;
For feasts of love I have been call'd unto,
Till now did ne'er invite, nor never woo.
'All my offences that abroad you see
Are errors of the blood, none of the mind;
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: ALCIBIADES: True.
SOCRATES: Then in taking care of what belongs to you, you do not take care
of yourself?
ALCIBIADES: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: For the art which takes care of our belongings appears not to be
the same as that which takes care of ourselves?
ALCIBIADES: Clearly not.
SOCRATES: And now let me ask you what is the art with which we take care
of ourselves?
ALCIBIADES: I cannot say.
SOCRATES: At any rate, thus much has been admitted, that the art is not
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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 Sophist by Plato: the number and nature of existences, talked to us in rather a light and
easy strain.
THEAETETUS: How?
STRANGER: As if we had been children, to whom they repeated each his own
mythus or story;--one said that there were three principles, and that at
one time there was war between certain of them; and then again there was
peace, and they were married and begat children, and brought them up; and
another spoke of two principles,--a moist and a dry, or a hot and a cold,
and made them marry and cohabit. The Eleatics, however, in our part of the
world, say that all things are many in name, but in nature one; this is
their mythus, which goes back to Xenophanes, and is even older. Then there
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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 Tales of the Klondyke by Jack London: over full and deep, in a way which bespoke wonder and
consideration.
"Wherefore we stand by a forking of the trail, you and I," she
went on calmly, "and I have come that we may look once more upon
each other, and once more only."
She was born of primitive stock, and primitive had been her
traditions and her days; so she regarded life stoically, and human
sacrifice as part of the natural order. The powers which ruled
the day-light and the dark, the flood and the frost, the bursting
of the bud and the withering of the leaf, were angry and in need
of propitiation. This they exacted in many ways,--death in the
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