| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: The last story, however incomplete and like the mere opening
of a serial, had been told; we handshook and "candlestuck,"
as somebody said, and went to bed.
I knew the next day that a letter containing the key had,
by the first post, gone off to his London apartments;
but in spite of--or perhaps just on account of--the eventual
diffusion of this knowledge we quite let him alone till
after dinner, till such an hour of the evening, in fact,
as might best accord with the kind of emotion on which our
hopes were fixed. Then he became as communicative as we could
desire and indeed gave us his best reason for being so.
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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 Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: mediaeval in character, because its dominant note is the
realisation of men through suffering. But for those who are not
artists, and to whom there is no mode of life but the actual life
of fact, pain is the only door to perfection. A Russian who lives
happily under the present system of government in Russia must
either believe that man has no soul, or that, if he has, it is not
worth developing. A Nihilist who rejects all authority, because he
knows authority to be evil, and welcomes all pain, because through
that he realises his personality, is a real Christian. To him the
Christian ideal is a true thing.
And yet, Christ did not revolt against authority. He accepted the
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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 Timaeus by Plato: between the midriff and the navel, having no part in opinion or reason or
mind, but only in feelings of pleasure and pain and the desires which
accompany them. For this nature is always in a passive state, revolving in
and about itself, repelling the motion from without and using its own, and
accordingly is not endowed by nature with the power of observing or
reflecting on its own concerns. Wherefore it lives and does not differ
from a living being, but is fixed and rooted in the same spot, having no
power of self-motion.
Now after the superior powers had created all these natures to be food for
us who are of the inferior nature, they cut various channels through the
body as through a garden, that it might be watered as from a running
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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 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: did not know and could not guess from the clever and serene face
of the learned man.
"But in what do you see the special characteristics of the
Russian laborer?" said Metrov; "in his biological
characteristics, so to speak, or in the condition in which he is
placed?"
Levin saw that there was an idea underlying this question with
which he did not agree. But he went on explaining his own idea
that the Russian laborer has a quite special view of the land,
different from that of other people; and to support this
proposition he made haste to add that in his opinion this
Anna Karenina |
