| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: In this manner the family from a natural relation grew into a highly
unnatural social anachronism. The loose ties of a roving life
became fetters of a fixed conventionality. Bonds originally of
mutual advantage hardened into restrictions by which the young were
hopelessly tethered to the old. Midway in its course the race
undertook to turn round and face backwards, as it journeyed on.
Its subsequent advance could be nothing but slow.
The head of a family is so now in something of a corporeal sense.
From him emanate all its actions; to him are responsible all its parts.
Any other member of it is as incapable of individual expression as
is the hand, or the foot, or the eye of man. Indeed, Confucian
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: of Greek to foreign languages, which he is led to consider, because he
finds that many Greek words are incapable of explanation. Allowing a good
deal for accident, and also for the fancies of the conditores linguae
Graecae, there is an element of which he is unable to give an account.
These unintelligible words he supposes to be of foreign origin, and to have
been derived from a time when the Greeks were either barbarians, or in
close relations to the barbarians. Socrates is aware that this principle
is liable to great abuse; and, like the 'Deus ex machina,' explains
nothing. Hence he excuses himself for the employment of such a device,
and remarks that in foreign words there is still a principle of
correctness, which applies equally both to Greeks and barbarians.
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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 Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: or eighteen; that he might very probably, with my assistance, make
a remove from this wilderness, and come into his own country again;
and that then it would be a thousand to one but he would repent his
choice, and the dislike of that circumstance might be
disadvantageous to both. I was going to say more, but he
interrupted me, smiling, and told me, with a great deal of modesty,
that I mistook in my guesses - that he had nothing of that kind in
his thoughts; and he was very glad to hear that I had an intent of
putting them in a way to see their own country again; and nothing
should have made him think of staying there, but that the voyage I
was going was so exceeding long and hazardous, and would carry him
Robinson Crusoe |
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 Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence: to be shipped over to England again six months later, more or less in
bits. Constance, his wife, was then twenty-three years old, and he was
twenty-nine.
His hold on life was marvellous. He didn't die, and the bits seemed to
grow together again. For two years he remained in the doctor's hands.
Then he was pronounced a cure, and could return to life again, with the
lower half of his body, from the hips down, paralysed for ever.
This was in 1920. They returned, Clifford and Constance, to his home,
Wragby Hall, the family 'seat'. His father had died, Clifford was now a
baronet, Sir Clifford, and Constance was Lady Chatterley. They came to
start housekeeping and married life in the rather forlorn home of the
Lady Chatterley's Lover |
