| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: before midnight, at which hour, haunted by no ghosts of the past
and by no visions of the future, I walked down the quay of the
Vieux Port to join the pilot-boat of my friends. I knew where
she would be waiting for her crew, in the little bit of a canal
behind the Fort at the entrance of the harbour. The deserted
quays looked very white and dry in the moonlight and as if frost-
bound in the sharp air of that December night. A prowler or two
slunk by noiselessly; a custom-house guard, soldier-like, a sword
by his side, paced close under the bowsprits of the long row of
ships moored bows on opposite the long, slightly curved,
continuous flat wall of the tall houses that seemed to be one
Some Reminiscences |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: all that simple stuff."
"Amory," said Kerry impatiently, "you're just going around in a
circle. If you want to be prominent, get out and try for
something; if you don't, just take it easy." He yawned. "Come on,
let's let the smoke drift off. We'll go down and watch football
practice."
Amory gradually accepted this point of view, decided that next
fall would inaugurate his career, and relinquished himself to
watching Kerry extract joy from 12 Univee.
They filled the Jewish youth's bed with lemon pie; they put out
the gas all over the house every night by blowing into the jet in
This Side of Paradise |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: which they can be compared.
IV. There is another subject to which I must briefly call attention, lest
I should seem to have overlooked it. Dr. Henry Jackson, of Trinity
College, Cambridge, in a series of articles which he has contributed to the
Journal of Philology, has put forward an entirely new explanation of the
Platonic 'Ideas.' He supposes that in the mind of Plato they took, at
different times in his life, two essentially different forms:--an earlier
one which is found chiefly in the Republic and the Phaedo, and a later,
which appears in the Theaetetus, Philebus, Sophist, Politicus, Parmenides,
Timaeus. In the first stage of his philosophy Plato attributed Ideas to
all things, at any rate to all things which have classes or common notions:
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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 Polly of the Circus by Margaret Mayo: become as mute as her own dead heart. She did not hear the whirr
of the great machine inside the tent, as it plunged through space
with its girl occupant. These things were a part of the daily
routine, part of the strange, vague dream through which she must
stumble for the rest of her life.
Jim watched her in silence. Her face was turned from him. She
had forgotten his presence.
"Star gazin', Poll?" he asked at length, dreading to disturb her
revery.
"I guess I was, Jim." She turned to him with a little, forced
smile. He longed to save her from Barker's threatened rebuke.
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