| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde: you?
MRS. ERLYNNE. Lady Windermere, before Heaven your husband is
guiltless of all offence towards you! And I - I tell you that had
it ever occurred to me that such a monstrous suspicion would have
entered your mind, I would have died rather than have crossed your
life or his - oh! died, gladly died! [Moves away to sofa R.]
LADY WINDERMERE. You talk as if you had a heart. Women like you
have no hearts. Heart is not in you. You are bought and sold.
[Sits L.C.]
MRS. ERLYNNE. [Starts, with a gesture of pain. Then restrains
herself, and comes over to where LADY WINDERMERE is sitting. As
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: prove very harmless."
Again Mr. Pyncheon turned his eyes towards the Claude. It was then
his daughter's will, in opposition to his own, that the experiment
should be fully tried. Henceforth, therefore, he did but consent,
not urge it. And was it not for her sake far more than for his own
that he desired its success? That lost parchment once restored,
the beautiful Alice Pyncheon, with the rich dowry which he could
then bestow, might wed an English duke or a German reigning-prince,
instead of some New England clergyman or lawyer! At the thought,
the ambitious father almost consented, in his heart, that, if the
devil's power were needed to the accomplishment of this great object,
House of Seven Gables |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Lover's Complaint by William Shakespeare: The one a palate hath that needs will taste,
Though reason weep, and cry It is thy last.
'For further I could say, This man's untrue,
And knew the patterns of his foul beguiling;
Heard where his plants in others' orchards grew,
Saw how deceits were gilded in his smiling;
Knew vows were ever brokers to defiling;
Thought characters and words, merely but art,
And bastards of his foul adulterate heart.
'And long upon these terms I held my city,
Till thus he 'gan besiege me: Gentle maid,
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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 Symposium by Plato: images of visible beauty (Greek), and from the hypotheses of the
Mathematical sciences, which are not yet based upon the idea of good,
through the concrete to the abstract, and, by different paths arriving,
behold the vision of the eternal (compare Symp. (Greek) Republic (Greek)
also Phaedrus). Under one aspect 'the idea is love'; under another,
'truth.' In both the lover of wisdom is the 'spectator of all time and of
all existence.' This is a 'mystery' in which Plato also obscurely
intimates the union of the spiritual and fleshly, the interpenetration of
the moral and intellectual faculties.
The divine image of beauty which resides within Socrates has been revealed;
the Silenus, or outward man, has now to be exhibited. The description of
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