| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: have given him what, now that they were off, she would not have the
chance of giving him. For she felt a sudden emptiness; a frustration.
Her feeling had come too late; there it was ready; but he no longer
needed it. He had become a very distinguished, elderly man, who had no
need of her whatsoever. She felt snubbed. He slung a knapsack round
his shoulders. He shared out the parcels--there were a number of them,
ill tied in brown paper. He sent Cam for a cloak. He had all the
appearance of a leader making ready for an expedition. Then, wheeling
about, he led the way with his firm military tread, in those wonderful
boots, carrying brown paper parcels, down the path, his children
following him. They looked, she thought, as if fate had devoted them
To the Lighthouse |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: large room, with its red, white, and gold, look like a corpse of
Imperial festivities.
"Monsieur, virtue shines on it all. I have no wish to owe a handsome
abode to having made of the beauty you are pleased to ascribe to me a
/man-trap/ and /a money-box for five-franc pieces/!"
The captain bit his lips as he recognized the words he had used to
vilify Josepha's avarice.
"And for whom are you so magnanimous?" said he. By this time the
baroness had got her rejected admirer as far as the door.--"For a
libertine!" said he, with a lofty grimace of virtue and superior
wealth.
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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 Lesser Hippias by Plato: the Symposium in which Alcibiades describes himself as self-convicted by
the words of Socrates. For the disparaging manner in which Schleiermacher
has spoken of this dialogue there seems to be no sufficient foundation. At
the same time, the lesson imparted is simple, and the irony more
transparent than in the undoubted dialogues of Plato. We know, too, that
Alcibiades was a favourite thesis, and that at least five or six dialogues
bearing this name passed current in antiquity, and are attributed to
contemporaries of Socrates and Plato. (1) In the entire absence of real
external evidence (for the catalogues of the Alexandrian librarians cannot
be regarded as trustworthy); and (2) in the absence of the highest marks
either of poetical or philosophical excellence; and (3) considering that we
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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 Damaged Goods by Upton Sinclair: changed! We must elevate the soul of the young man by taking
these facts out of the realm of mystery and of slang. We must
awaken in him a pride in that creative power with which each one
of us is endowed. We must make him understand that he is a sort
of temple in which is prepared the future of the race, and we
must teach him that he must transmit, intact, the heritage
entrusted to him--the precious heritage which has been built out
of the tears and miseries and sufferings of an interminable line
of ancestors!"
So the doctor argued. He brought forth case after case to prove
that the prostitute was what she was, not because of innate
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