| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: unsettled his wife's estimate of him. Was it possible that he
was simply undeveloped, that he had delayed, somewhat longer than
is usual, the laborious process of growing up? He had the kind
of sporadic shrewdness which causes it to be said of a dull man
that he is "no fool"; and it was this quality that his wife found
most trying. Even to the naturalist it is annoying to have his
deductions disturbed by some unforeseen aberrancy of form or
function; and how much more so to the wife whose estimate of
herself is inevitably bound up with her judgment of her husband!
Arment's shrewdness did not, indeed, imply any latent
intellectual power; it suggested, rather, potentialities of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: man has a personal work or duty, relating to his own home, and a
public work or duty, which is the expansion of the other, relating
to the state. So a woman has a personal work or duty, relating to
her own home, and a public work or duty, which is also the expansion
of that.
Now the man's work for his own home is, as has been said, to secure
its maintenance, progress, and defence; the woman's to secure its
order, comfort, and loveliness.
Expand both these functions. The man's duty as a member of a
commonwealth, is to assist in the maintenance, in the advance, in
the defence of the state. The woman's duty, as a member of 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 Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: opposed to that of the better class. I repeat, I withhold my praise so
far; but, given the fact that this is the type agreed upon, I propose
to show that they set about its preservation in the right way; and
that those other transactions in connection with it, which are looked
upon as blunders by the rest of the Hellenic world, are the reverse.
[1] See Grote, "H. G." vi. p. 47 foll.; Thuc. i. 76, 77; viii. 48;
Boeckh, "P. E. A." passim; Hartman, "An. Xen. N." cap. viii.;
Roquette, "Xen. Vit." S. 26; Newman, "Pol. Arist." i. 538; and
"Xenophontis qui fertur libellus de Republica Atheniensium," ed.
A. Kirchhoff (MDCCCLXXIV), whose text I have chiefly followed.
[2] Lit. "I do not praise their choice of the (particular) type, in so
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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 Men of Iron by Howard Pyle: him, in a voice that sounded faint and distant, if he was
dangerously wounded. He did not answer, and one of the
attendants, leaping from his horse, opened the umbril of his
helmet, disclosing the dull, hollow eyes, the ashy, colorless
lips, and the waxy forehead, upon which stood great beads of
sweat.
"Water! water!" he cried, hoarsely; "give me to drink!" Then,
quitting his hold upon the horse, he started blindly across the
lists towards the gate of the barrier. A shadow that chilled his
heart seemed to fall upon him. "It is death," he muttered; then
he stopped, then swayed for an instant, and then toppled
Men of Iron |
