| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Cavalry General by Xenophon: IX
To read these observations over a few times will be sufficient, but
for giving them effect the officer will need perpetually to act as
circumstances require.[1] He must take in the situation at a glance,
and carry out unflinchingly whatever is expedient for the moment. To
set down in writing everything that he must do, is not a whit more
possible than to know the future as a whole.[2] But of all hints and
suggestions the most important to my mind is this: whatever you
determine to be right, with diligence endeavour to perform. For be it
tillage of the soil, or trading, or seafaring, or the art of ruling,
without pains applied to bring the matter to perfection, the best
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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 Smalcald Articles by Dr. Martin Luther: the flesh he serves the law of sin. For it is not in our
power, but belongs to God alone, to judge which, how great,
and how many the sins are, as it is written in Ps. 143, 2:
Enter not into judgment with Thy servant; for in Thy sight
shall no man living be justified. And Paul, 1 Cor. 4, 4, says:
For I know nothing by myself; yet am I not hereby justified.
VIII. Of Confession.
Since Absolution or the Power of the Keys is also an aid and
consolation against sin and a bad conscience, ordained by
Christ [Himself] in the Gospel, Confession or Absolution ought
by no means to be abolished in the Church, especially on
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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: Proceeding upon these principles we appear to arrive at the conclusion that
nineteen-twentieths of all the writings which have ever been ascribed to
Plato, are undoubtedly genuine. There is another portion of them,
including the Epistles, the Epinomis, the dialogues rejected by the
ancients themselves, namely, the Axiochus, De justo, De virtute, Demodocus,
Sisyphus, Eryxias, which on grounds, both of internal and external
evidence, we are able with equal certainty to reject. But there still
remains a small portion of which we are unable to affirm either that they
are genuine or spurious. They may have been written in youth, or possibly
like the works of some painters, may be partly or wholly the compositions
of pupils; or they may have been the writings of some contemporary
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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 Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: group of phenomena obtained for him by the abstract method, he will
adopt, he tells us, neither the purely deductive nor the purely
inductive mode but the union of both. In other words, he formally
adopts that method of analysis upon the importance of which I have
dwelt before.
And lastly, while, without doubt, enormous simplicity in the
elements under consideration is the result of the employment of the
abstract method, even within the limit thus obtained a certain
selection must be made, and a selection involves a theory. For the
facts of life cannot be tabulated with as great an ease as the
colours of birds and insects can be tabulated. Now, Polybius
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