| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: some ten years they will have disappeared or given place to other
fresh defects, which are all inevitable and will in their turn
alarm the faint-hearted. The students' sins often vex me, but
that vexation is nothing in comparison with the joy I have been
experiencing now for the last thirty years when I talk to my
pupils, lecture to them, watch their relations, and compare them
with people not of their circle.
Mihail Fyodorovitch speaks evil of everything. Katya listens, and
neither of them notices into what depths the apparently innocent
diversion of finding fault with their neighbours is gradually
drawing them. They are not conscious how by degrees simple talk
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Koran: for aid. Said Moses to him, 'Verily, thou art obviously quarrelsome.
And when he wished to assault him who was the enemy to them both, he
said, 'O Moses! dost thou desire to kill me as thou didst kill a
person yesterday? thou dost only desire to be a tyrant in the earth;
and thou dost not desire to be of those who do right!' And a man
came from the remote parts of the city running, said he, 'O Moses!
verily, the chiefs are deliberating concerning thee to kill thee; go
then forth; verily, I am to you a sincere adviser!'
So he went forth therefrom, afraid and expectant. Said he, 'Lord,
save me from the unjust people!'
And when he turned his face in the direction of Midian, he said, 'It
The Koran |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: interpreted from himself, and on first reading we certainly have a
difficulty in understanding his drift, or his relation to the two other
interlocutors in the dialogue. Does he agree with Cratylus or with
Hermogenes, and is he serious in those fanciful etymologies, extending over
more than half the dialogue, which he seems so greatly to relish? Or is he
serious in part only; and can we separate his jest from his earnest?--Sunt
bona, sunt quaedum mediocria, sunt mala plura. Most of them are
ridiculously bad, and yet among them are found, as if by accident,
principles of philology which are unsurpassed in any ancient writer, and
even in advance of any philologer of the last century. May we suppose that
Plato, like Lucian, has been amusing his fancy by writing a comedy in the
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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 The Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: you get up for the early service. And I want you to think over it
in the church. It is filled with tenderness and with anxiety.
Life is not so very long, little daughter, and it has no time to
waste in anger or in bitterness. A little work, a little sleep, a
little love, and it is all over.
"Will you think of this to-day?"
He locked up the house, and went slowly up to bed Elizabeth found
the letter the next morning. She stood in the bleak room, with the
ashes of last night's fire still smoking, and the stockings
overhead not festive in the gray light, but looking forlorn and
abandoned. Suddenly her eyes, dry and fiercely burning for so long,
The Breaking Point |
