| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: gymnastic, and is knavish, false, ignoble, illiberal, working deceitfully
by the help of lines, and colours, and enamels, and garments, and making
men affect a spurious beauty to the neglect of the true beauty which is
given by gymnastic.
I would rather not be tedious, and therefore I will only say, after the
manner of the geometricians (for I think that by this time you will be able
to follow)
as tiring : gymnastic :: cookery : medicine;
or rather,
as tiring : gymnastic :: sophistry : legislation;
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 A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: fair dream, for every charitable hope. The great aim is to
remain true to the emotions called out of the deep encircled by
the firmament of stars, whose infinite numbers and awful
distances may move us to laughter or tears (was it the Walrus or
the Carpenter, in the poem, who "wept to see such quantities of
sand"?), or, again, to a properly steeled heart, may matter
nothing at all.
The casual quotation, which had suggested itself out of a poem
full of merit, leads me to remark that in the conception of a
purely spectacular universe, where inspiration of every sort has
a rational existence, the artist of every kind finds a natural
A Personal Record |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Riverman by Stewart Edward White: had just found its life by slipping inside the half-open door and
closing it after her.
Orde stood for a moment uncertain; then turned away and walked up
the street, his eyes so blinded by the greater glory that he all but
ran down an inoffensive passer-by.
At the hotel he wrote a long letter to his mother. The first part
was full of the exultation of his discovery. He told of his good
fortune quite as something just born, utterly forgetting his
mother's predictions before he came East. Then as the first
effervescence died, a more gloomy view of the situation came
uppermost. To his heated imagination the deadlock seemed complete.
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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 Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson: angry with Alan, but angry with myself in the bargain; and it
made me the more cruel.
"You asked me to speak," said I. "Well, then, I will. You own
yourself that you have done me a disservice; I have had to
swallow an affront: I have never reproached you, I never named
the thing till you did. And now you blame me," cried I, "because
I cannae laugh and sing as if I was glad to be affronted. The
next thing will be that I'm to go down upon my knees and thank
you for it! Ye should think more of others, Alan Breck. If ye
thought more of others, ye would perhaps speak less about
yourself; and when a friend that likes you very well has passed
Kidnapped |
