| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: and interest is for the sake of immortality.'
I was astonished at her words, and said: 'Is this really true, O thou wise
Diotima?' And she answered with all the authority of an accomplished
sophist: 'Of that, Socrates, you may be assured;--think only of the
ambition of men, and you will wonder at the senselessness of their ways,
unless you consider how they are stirred by the love of an immortality of
fame. They are ready to run all risks greater far than they would have run
for their children, and to spend money and undergo any sort of toil, and
even to die, for the sake of leaving behind them a name which shall be
eternal. Do you imagine that Alcestis would have died to save Admetus, or
Achilles to avenge Patroclus, or your own Codrus in order to preserve the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: feelings, and that it costs them more nobility of soul to do
nothing in particular, than would carry on all the wars, by
sea or land, of bellicose humanity. It may very well be so,
and yet not touch the point in question. For what I desire is
to see some of this nobility brought face to face with me in
an inspiriting achievement. A man may talk smoothly over a
cigar in my club smoking-room from now to the Day of Judgment,
without adding anything to mankind's treasury of illustrious
and encouraging examples. It is not over the virtues of a
curate-and-tea-party novel, that people are abashed into high
resolutions. It may be because their hearts are crass, but to
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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 Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: labour of others. The need for her physical labour having gone, and mental
industry not having taken its place, she bedecked and scented her person,
or had it bedecked and scented for her, she lay upon her sofa, or drove or
was carried out in her vehicle, and, loaded with jewels, she sought by
dissipations and amusements to fill up the inordinate blank left by the
lack of productive activity. And as the hand whitened and frame softened,
till, at last, the very duties of motherhood, which were all the
constitution of her life left her, became distasteful, and, from the
instant when her infant came damp from her womb, it passed into the hands
of others, to be tended and reared by them; and from youth to age her
offspring often owed nothing to her personal toil. In many cases so
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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 Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: sang, but the original French words:
"Ah, voile man envie,
Voila mon seul desir:
Rendez moi ma patrie,
Ou laissez moi mourir."
Which may be rendered:
But one wish I implore,
One wish is all my cry:
Give back my native land once more,
Give back, or let me die.
Then it happened that his eye fell again upon the stranger near the door,
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