| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: have been wrongly placed.
ERNEST. Ah! now you are flippant.
GILBERT. Who would not be flippant when he is gravely told that
the Greeks had no art-critics? I can understand it being said that
the constructive genius of the Greeks lost itself in criticism, but
not that the race to whom we owe the critical spirit did not
criticise. You will not ask me to give you a survey of Greek art
criticism from Plato to Plotinus. The night is too lovely for
that, and the moon, if she heard us, would put more ashes on her
face than are there already. But think merely of one perfect
little work of aesthetic criticism, Aristotle's TREATISE ON POETRY.
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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 Exiles by Honore de Balzac: over the Seine. A tiny garden, reclaimed from the waters, displayed at
the foot of this modest dwelling its beds of cabbages and onions, and
a few rose-bushes, sheltered by palings, forming a sort of hedge. A
little structure of lath and mud served as a kennel for a big dog, the
indispensable guardian of so lonely a dwelling. Beyond this kennel was
a little plot, where the hens cackled whose eggs were sold to the
Canons. Here and there on this patch of earth, muddy or dry according
to the whimsical Parisian weather, a few trees grew, constantly lashed
by the wind, and teased and broken by the passer-by--willows, reeds,
and tall grasses.
The Eyot, the Seine, the landing-place, the house, were all
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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 Iron Puddler by James J. Davis: good for the country. Hard work and good crops would cure our
ills. But millions voted for a poison that would have destroyed
us. From that time on I dreamed of a new kind of school, not the
kind we had that turned out men to grope blindly between good and
folly. But a school based on the fundamental facts of life and
labor, the need of food and housing, and the sweating skill that
brings man most of his blessings. A school from which no man
could come out ignorant. That school should teach the eternal
facts, and he that denied the facts would then be known for a
fool or a rogue--and not be thought a Messiah.
I love sentiment, and I believe in God. And I believe that
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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 Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: men;--this evil custom I had been as forward in as others, and
this I was now called out of and required to cease from.
"These and many more evil customs which had sprung up in the
night of darkness and general apostasy from the truth and true
religion were now, by the inshining of this pure ray of divine
light in my conscience, gradually discovered to me to be what I
ought to cease from, shun, and stand a witness against."[176]
[176] The History of Thomas Elwood, written by Himself, London,
1885, pp. 32-34
These early Quakers were Puritans indeed. The slightest
inconsistency between profession and deed jarred some of them to
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