| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain: "Want it for Jim to keep a journal on."
"Journal your granny -- JIM can't write."
"S'pose he CAN'T write -- he can make marks on
the shirt, can't he, if we make him a pen out of
an old pewter spoon or a piece of an old iron barrel-
hoop?"
"Why, Tom, we can pull a feather out of a goose
and make him a better one; and quicker, too."
"PRISONERS don't have geese running around the
donjon-keep to pull pens out of, you muggins. They
ALWAYS make their pens out of the hardest, toughest,
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: anything else; if a man is better able than we are to promote virtue ever
so little, we must be content with the result. A teacher of this sort I
believe myself to be, and above all other men to have the knowledge which
makes a man noble and good; and I give my pupils their money's-worth, and
even more, as they themselves confess. And therefore I have introduced the
following mode of payment:--When a man has been my pupil, if he likes he
pays my price, but there is no compulsion; and if he does not like, he has
only to go into a temple and take an oath of the value of the instructions,
and he pays no more than he declares to be their value.
Such is my Apologue, Socrates, and such is the argument by which I
endeavour to show that virtue may be taught, and that this is the opinion
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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 Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: sentiment for the tender heart that slipped the piece of gold
into Cosette's sabot, that was virginally troubled at the
fluttering of her dress in the spring wind, or put the blind
girl beside the deformity of the laughing man. This, then,
is the last praise that we can award to these romances. The
author has shown a power of just subordination hitherto
unequalled; and as, in reaching forward to one class of
effects, he has not been forgetful or careless of the other,
his work is more nearly complete work, and his art, with all
its imperfections, deals more comprehensively with the
materials of life than that of any of his otherwise more sure
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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 Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: "Ah!" And as Chichikov unrolled the document and ran his eye over it
he could not but marvel at the elegant neatness with which it had been
inscribed.
"It is a beautiful piece of writing," he said. "In fact, there will be
no need to make a copy of it. Also, it has a border around its edge!
Who worked that exquisite border?"
"Do not ask me," said Manilov.
"Did YOU do it?"
"No; my wife."
"Dear, dear!" Chichikov cried. "To think that I should have put her to
so much trouble!"
Dead Souls |
