| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: and there it is to be seen to this day.
The putting this halter up here was not so wonderful to me as it
was that the posterity of that lord, who remained in good rank some
time after, should never prevail to have that mark of infamy taken
off from the memory of their ancestor.
There are several other monuments in this cathedral, as
particularly of two noblemen of ancient families in Scotland--one
of the name of Hay, and one of the name of Gordon; but they give us
nothing of their history, so that we must be content to say there
they lie, and that is all.
The cloister, and the chapter-house adjoining to the church, are
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: takes the form of banter and irony, here of illustration.
The attack upon the Ideas is resumed in the Philebus, and is followed by a
return to a more rational philosophy. The perplexity of the One and Many
is there confined to the region of Ideas, and replaced by a theory of
classification; the Good arranged in classes is also contrasted with the
barren abstraction of the Megarians. The war is carried on against the
Eristics in all the later dialogues, sometimes with a playful irony, at
other times with a sort of contempt. But there is no lengthened refutation
of them. The Parmenides belongs to that stage of the dialogues of Plato in
which he is partially under their influence, using them as a sort of
'critics or diviners' of the truth of his own, and of the Eleatic theories.
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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 The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: as if somehow he were stationary among things that passed over him
and around him, voices, people's bodies, birds, only Rachel too
was waiting with him. He looked at her sometimes as if she must
know that they were waiting together, and being drawn on together,
without being able to offer any resistance. Again he read from
his book:
Whoever you are holding me now in your hand,
Without one thing all will be useless.
A bird gave a wild laugh, a monkey chuckled a malicious question,
and, as fire fades in the hot sunshine, his words flickered and went out.
By degrees as the river narrowed, and the high sandbanks fell
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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 Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Do you mean to make me try to think that you know less than I do?"
"I know that you foreshadow the beginning of a scene.
Pray be careful, and as accurate as if the doors of heaven
Were to swing or to stay bolted from now on for evermore."
"Do you conceive, with all your smooth contempt of every feeling,
Of hiding what you know and what you must have known before?
Is it worth a woman's torture to stand here and have you smiling,
With only your poor fetish of possession on your side?
No thing but one is wholly sure, and that's not one to scare me;
When I meet it I may say to God at last that I have tried.
And yet, for all I know, or all I dare believe, my trials
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