| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: "And that was well said, my pretty one," answered Mother Rigby.
"Then thou speakest like thyself, and meant nothing. Thou shalt
have a hundred such set phrases, and five hundred to the boot of
them. And now, darling, I have taken so much pains with thee and
thou art so beautiful, that, by my troth, I love thee better than
any witch's puppet in the world; and I've made them of all
sorts--clay, wax, straw, sticks, night fog, morning mist, sea
foam, and chimney smoke. But thou art the very best. So give heed
to what I say."
"Yes, kind mother," said the figure, "with all my heart!"
"With all thy heart!" cried the old witch, setting her hands to
Mosses From An Old Manse |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: periodical exasperation. But as this ostracism took nothing really
from her, she quietly left society and lived in books which offered
her such infinite resources. She meditated on what she read, she
compared systems, she widened immeasurably the horizons of her
intellect and the extent of her education; in this way she opened the
gates of her soul to curiosity.
During this period of resolute study, in which religion supported and
maintained her mind, she obtained the friendship of Monsieur
Grossetete, one of those old men whose mental superiority grows rusty
in provincial life, but who, when they come in contact with an eager
mind, recover something of their former brilliancy. The good man took
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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 Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: And in thy dead arms do I mean to place him,
Swearing I slew him, seeing thee embrace him.
'So thy surviving husband shall remain
The scornful mark of every open eye;
Thy kinsmen hang their heads at this disdain,
Thy issue blurr'd with nameless bastardy:
And thou, the author of their obloquy,
Shalt have thy trespass cited up in rhymes,
And sung by children in succeeding times.
'But if thou yield, I rest thy secret friend:
The fault unknown is as a thought unacted;
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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 Charmides by Plato: first half of the Dialogues, which, according to the order adopted in this
work, ends with the Republic, the 'conception of Mind' and a way of
speaking more in agreement with modern terminology, in the latter half.
But there is no reason to suppose that Plato's theory, or, rather, his
various theories, of the Ideas underwent any definite change during his
period of authorship. They are substantially the same in the twelfth Book
of the Laws as in the Meno and Phaedo; and since the Laws were written in
the last decade of his life, there is no time to which this change of
opinions can be ascribed. It is true that the theory of Ideas takes
several different forms, not merely an earlier and a later one, in the
various Dialogues. They are personal and impersonal, ideals and ideas,
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