| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: some of the most elaborate passages in their own writings, and asked what
was the meaning of them--thinking that they would teach me something. Will
you believe me? I am almost ashamed to confess the truth, but I must say
that there is hardly a person present who would not have talked better
about their poetry than they did themselves. Then I knew that not by
wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they
are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not
understand the meaning of them. The poets appeared to me to be much in the
same case; and I further observed that upon the strength of their poetry
they believed themselves to be the wisest of men in other things in which
they were not wise. So I departed, conceiving myself to be superior to
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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 Pupil by Henry James: might have made him really require kicking. Pemberton would try to
be school himself - a bigger seminary than five hundred grazing
donkeys, so that, winning no prizes, the boy would remain
unconscious and irresponsible and amusing - amusing, because,
though life was already intense in his childish nature, freshness
still made there a strong draught for jokes. It turned out that
even in the still air of Morgan's various disabilities jokes
flourished greatly. He was a pale lean acute undeveloped little
cosmopolite, who liked intellectual gymnastics and who also, as
regards the behaviour of mankind, had noticed more things than you
might suppose, but who nevertheless had his proper playroom of
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