| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: form from increasing in bulk, while they harden and confirm by
habit its muscular powers. His face, sharp-featured, sun-burnt,
and freckled, had a sinister expression of violence, impudence,
and cunning, each of which seemed alternately to predominate over
the others. Sandy-coloured hair, and reddish eyebrows, from
under which looked forth his sharp grey eyes, completed the
inauspicious outline of the horseman's physiognomy. He had
pistols in his holsters, and another pair peeped from his belt,
though he had taken some pains to conceal them by buttoning his
doublet. He wore a rusted steel head piece; a buff jacket of
rather an antique cast; gloves, of which that for the right hand
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: SOCRATES: Not all, Ion, surely. Have you already forgotten what you were
saying? A rhapsode ought to have a better memory.
ION: Why, what am I forgetting?
SOCRATES: Do you not remember that you declared the art of the rhapsode to
be different from the art of the charioteer?
ION: Yes, I remember.
SOCRATES: And you admitted that being different they would have different
subjects of knowledge?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then upon your own showing the rhapsode, and the art of the
rhapsode, will not know everything?
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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 Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain: this evening that I could fetch him around without any great amount
of effort, but I've been getting more and more heavyhearted and
doubtful straight along, ever since. If he tells me about this thing,
all right; but if he doesn't, I sha'n't let on. I--well, I'd like to tell
Pudd'nhead Wilson, but--no, I'll think about that; perhaps I won't."
He whirled off another dead huzzah, and said, "I'm reformed,
and this time I'll stay so, sure!"
He was about to close with a final grand silent demonstration,
when he suddenly recollected that Wilson had put it out of his power
to pawn or sell the Indian knife, and that he was once more in
awful peril of exposure by his creditors for that reason.
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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 Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw: progress is the removal of censorships. There is the whole case
against censorships in a nutshell.
It will be asked whether theatrical managers are to be allowed to
produce what they like, without regard to the public interest.
But that is not the alternative. The managers of our London
music-halls are not subject to any censorship. They produce
their entertainments on their own responsibility, and have no
two-guinea certificates to plead if their houses are conducted
viciously. They know that if they lose their character, the
County Council will simply refuse to renew their license at the
end of the year; and nothing in the history of popular art is
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