| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy: Pimpernel. Again he rubbed his hands together, and, following the
example of Sir Percy Blakeney, he too, stretched himself out in the
corner of another sofa, shut his eyes, opened his mouth, gave forth
sounds of peaceful breathing, and. . .waited!
CHAPTER XV DOUBT
Marguerite Blakeney had watched the slight sable-clad figure
of Chauvelin, as he worked his way through the ball-room. Then
perforce she had had to wait, while her nerves tingled with
excitement.
Listlessly she sat in the small, still deserted boudoir,
looking out through the curtained doorway on the dancing couples
The Scarlet Pimpernel |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Statesman by Plato: nature, and binds that with human cords.
YOUNG SOCRATES: I do not understand what you mean.
STRANGER: The meaning is, that the opinion about the honourable and the
just and good and their opposites, which is true and confirmed by reason,
is a divine principle, and when implanted in the soul, is implanted, as I
maintain, in a nature of heavenly birth.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes; what else should it be?
STRANGER: Only the Statesman and the good legislator, having the
inspiration of the royal muse, can implant this opinion, and he, only in
the rightly educated, whom we were just now describing.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Likely enough.
Statesman |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: mountains did those watery guides lead his vagrant steps, and with
what curious, mixed, and sometimes profitable company did they make
him familiar!
There was one exquisite stream among the Alleghanies, called
Lycoming Creek, beside which the family spent a summer in a
decadent inn, kept by a tremulous landlord who was always sitting
on the steps of the porch, and whose most memorable remark was that
he had "a misery in his stomach." This form of speech amused the
boy, but he did not in the least comprehend it. It was the
description of an unimaginable experience in a region which was as
yet known to him only as the seat of pleasure. He did not
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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 Euthydemus by Plato: Dionysodorus; for they are quite different things.
Contradiction! said Dionysodorus; why, there never was such a thing.
Certainly there is, he replied; there can be no question of that. Do you,
Dionysodorus, maintain that there is not?
You will never prove to me, he said, that you have heard any one
contradicting any one else.
Indeed, said Ctesippus; then now you may hear me contradicting
Dionysodorus.
Are you prepared to make that good?
Certainly, he said.
Well, have not all things words expressive of them?
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