| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from On Revenues by Xenophon: Harpocr. s.v., it was 12 drachmae per annum for a male and 6
drachmae for a female.
[4] Or, "the class in question." According to Schneider (who cites the
{atimetos metanastes} of Homer, "Il." ix. 648), the reference is
not to disabilities in the technical sense, but to humiliating
duties, such as the {skaphephoria} imposed on the men, or the
{udriaphoria} and {skiadephoria} imposed on their wives and
daughters in attendance on the {kanephoroi} at the Panathenaic and
other festival processions. See Arist. "Eccles." 730 foll.;
Boeckh, "P. E. A." IV. x. (Eng. tr. G. Cornewall Lewis, p. 538).
[5] Or, reading {megas men gar o agon, mega de kai to apo ton tekhnon
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Message by Honore de Balzac: only fatal accident caused by the overturn.
"But it was partly his own fault," the coachman said to me.
At La Charite, I executed the poor fellow's dying wishes. His
mother was away from home, which in a manner was fortunate for
me. Nevertheless, I had to assuage the grief of an old woman-
servant, who staggered back at the tidings of her young master's
death, and sank half-dead into a chair when she saw the blood-
stained key. But I had another and more dreadful sorrow to think
of, the sorrow of a woman who had lost her last love; so I left
the old woman to her prosopopeia, and carried off the precious
correspondence, carefully sealed by my friend of the day.
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: that is this - when we see efts in the pond, never to throw stones
at them, or catch them with crooked pins, or put them into
vivariums with sticklebacks, that the sticklebacks may prick them
in their poor little stomachs, and make them jump out of the glass
into somebody's work-box, and so come to a bad end. For these efts
are nothing else but the water-babies who are stupid and dirty, and
will not learn their lessons and keep themselves clean; and,
therefore (as comparative anatomists will tell you fifty years
hence, though they are not learned enough to tell you now), their
skulls grow flat, their jaws grow out, and their brains grow small,
and their tails grow long, and they lose all their ribs (which I am
|
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 End of the Tether by Joseph Conrad: mind had remained as incapable of penetrating the sim-
plest motives of those he served as they themselves were
incapable of detecting through the crust of the earth
the secret nature of its heart, which may be fire or may
be stone. But he had no doubt whatever that the Sofala
was out of the proper track for crossing the bar at
Batu Beru.
It was a slight error. The ship could not have been
more than twice her own length too far to the north-
ward; and a white man at a loss for a cause (since it
was impossible to suspect Captain Whalley of blunder-
End of the Tether |
