| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: camp; from whence he shortly after privily withdrew himself, and
was (according to his estate) royally entertained and lodged by
Lucrece at Collatium. The same night he treacherously stealeth
into her chamber, violently ravished her, and early in the
morning speedeth away. Lucrece, in this lamentable plight,
hastily dispatched messengers, one to Rome for her father,
another to the camp for Collatine. They came, the one
accompanied with Junius Brutus, the other with Publius Valerius;
and finding Lucrece attired in mourning habit, demanded the cause
of her sorrow. She, first taking an oath of them for her
revenge, revealed the actor, and whole manner of his dealing, and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: unhomely destination, and lay-to at last where the rock clapped its
black head above the swell, with the tall iron barrack on its
spider legs, and the truncated tower, and the cranes waving their
arms, and the smoke of the engine-fire rising in the mid-sea. An
ugly reef is this of the Dhu Heartach; no pleasant assemblage of
shelves, and pools, and creeks, about which a child might play for
a whole summer without weariness, like the Bell Rock or the
Skerryvore, but one oval nodule of black-trap, sparsely bedabbled
with an inconspicuous fucus, and alive in every crevice with a
dingy insect between a slater and a bug. No other life was there
but that of sea-birds, and of the sea itself, that here ran like a
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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 Othello by William Shakespeare: Aemil. Yes, a dozen: and as many to'th' vantage, as
would store the world they plaid for.
But I do thinke it is their Husbands faults
If Wiues do fall: (Say, that they slacke their duties,
And powre our Treasures into forraigne laps;
Or else breake out in peeuish Iealousies,
Throwing restraint vpon vs: Or say they strike vs,
Or scant our former hauing in despight)
Why we haue galles: and though we haue some Grace,
Yet haue we some Reuenge. Let Husbands know,
Their wiues haue sense like them: They see, and smell,
Othello |
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 Charmides by Plato: which occurs in the Prologues to the Parmenides, but seems rather to belong
to a later stage of the philosophy of Plato.
CHARMIDES, OR TEMPERANCE
by
Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Socrates, who is the narrator, Charmides,
Chaerephon, Critias.
SCENE: The Palaestra of Taureas, which is near the Porch of the King
Archon.
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