| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson: were gone. Alan must have uncorked a bottle of whisky and
drank three or four glasses one after the other, without
sitting down, for there was no chair, and that in his own
cold lobby on this freezing night! It fully explained his
eccentricities, John reflected sagely, as he mixed himself a
grog. Poor Alan! He was drunk; and what a dreadful thing
was drink, and what a slave to it poor Alan was, to drink in
this unsociable, uncomfortable fashion! The man who would
drink alone, except for health's sake - as John was now doing
- was a man utterly lost. He took the grog out, and felt
hazier, but warmer. It was hard work opening the portmanteau
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: given as the definition, not of temperance, but of justice; (5) The
impatience which is exhibited by Socrates of any definition of temperance
in which an element of science or knowledge is not included; (6) The
beginning of metaphysics and logic implied in the two questions: whether
there can be a science of science, and whether the knowledge of what you
know is the same as the knowledge of what you do not know; and also in the
distinction between 'what you know' and 'that you know,' (Greek;) here too
is the first conception of an absolute self-determined science (the claims
of which, however, are disputed by Socrates, who asks cui bono?) as well as
the first suggestion of the difficulty of the abstract and concrete, and
one of the earliest anticipations of the relation of subject and object,
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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 Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock: to Locksley Castle, which he found in the possession of his lieutenant;
whom he again left there with a sufficient force to hold it in safe
keeping in the king's name, and proceeded to London to report the results
of his enterprise.
Now Henry our royal king was very wroth at the earl's evasion,
and swore by Saint Thomas-a-Becket (whom he had himself translated
into a saint by having him knocked on the head), that he would
give the castle and lands of Locksley to the man who should bring
in the earl. Hereupon ensued a process of thought in the mind
of the knight. The eyes of the fair huntress of Arlingford had
left a wound in his heart which only she who gave could heal.
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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 To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: be 'next week,' now it has come to 'next month,'
and so on--soon it will be next spring, for all I
know."
Noticing a stranger listening to him with a va-
cant grin, he explained, stretching out his legs cyn-
ically, that this queer old Hagberd, a retired coast-
ing-skipper, was waiting for the return of a son of
his. The boy had been driven away from home, he
shouldn't wonder; had run away to sea and had
never been heard of since. Put to rest in Davy
Jones's locker this many a day, as likely as not.
To-morrow |
