| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: little oars, for want of room. But the queen had before
contrived another project. She ordered the joiner to make a
wooden trough of three hundred feet long, fifty broad, and eight
deep; which, being well pitched, to prevent leaking, was placed
on the floor, along the wall, in an outer room of the palace. It
had a cock near the bottom to let out the water, when it began to
grow stale; and two servants could easily fill it in half an
hour. Here I often used to row for my own diversion, as well as
that of the queen and her ladies, who thought themselves well
entertained with my skill and agility. Sometimes I would put up
my sail, and then my business was only to steer, while the ladies
Gulliver's Travels |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger: type. As represented by militaristic governments, militarism like
Socialism has always encouraged the proletariat to increase and
multiply. Imperial Germany was the outstanding and awful example of
this attitude. Before the war the fall in the birth-rate was viewed by
the Junker party with the gravest misgivings. Bernhardi and the
protagonists of DEUTSCHLAND-UBER-ALLES condemned it in the strongest
terms. The Marxians unconsciously repeat the words of the government
representative, Krohne, who, in a debate on the subject in the
Prussian Diet, February 1916, asserted: ``Unfortunately this view has
gained followers amongst the German women....These women, in refusing
to rear strong and able children to continue the race, drag into the
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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 Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri: CANTO XXX
Soon as the polar light, which never knows
Setting nor rising, nor the shadowy veil
Of other cloud than sin, fair ornament
Of the first heav'n, to duty each one there
Safely convoying, as that lower doth
The steersman to his port, stood firmly fix'd;
Forthwith the saintly tribe, who in the van
Between the Gryphon and its radiance came,
Did turn them to the car, as to their rest:
And one, as if commission'd from above,
The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) |
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 Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: him? They seem to me to have no bearing on the point whatever.
SOCRATES: Quite the contrary, my sweet friend: only the poet is talking
in riddles after the fashion of his tribe. For all poetry has by nature an
enigmatical character, and it is by no means everybody who can interpret
it. And if, moreover, the spirit of poetry happen to seize on a man who is
of a begrudging temper and does not care to manifest his wisdom but keeps
it to himself as far as he can, it does indeed require an almost superhuman
wisdom to discover what the poet would be at. You surely do not suppose
that Homer, the wisest and most divine of poets, was unaware of the
impossibility of knowing a thing badly: for it was no less a person than
he who said of Margites that 'he knew many things, but knew them all
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