| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: attached to her husband, by whom she was treated with a callous
yet polite indifference, which, to one whose heart was as tender
as her judgment was weak, was more painful perhaps than absolute
ill-usage. Sir Philip was a voluptuary--that is, a completely
selfish egotist--whose disposition and character resembled the
rapier he wore, polished, keen, and brilliant, but inflexible and
unpitying. As he observed carefully all the usual forms towards
his lady, he had the art to deprive her even of the compassion of
the world; and useless and unavailing as that may be while
actually possessed by the sufferer, it is, to a mind like Lady
Forester's, most painful to know she has it not.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Talisman by Walter Scott: Adam, expel these adopted furies from thy breast--thy pride, thy
luxury, thy bloodthirstiness."
"He raves," said Richard, turning from the solitary to De Vaux,
as one who felt some pain from a sarcasm which yet he could not
resent; then turned him calmly, and somewhat scornfully, to the
anchoret, as he replied, "Thou hast found a fair bevy of
daughters, reverend father, to one who hath been but few months
married; but since I must put them from my roof, it were but like
a father to provide them with suitable matches. Therefore, I
will part with my pride to the noble canons of the church--my
luxury, as thou callest it, to the monks of the rule--and my
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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 Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: philosophic theme to slacken even in twenty-five years if the
theme still held good as a theory of actual life. If the history
of Germany from 1849 to 1876 had been the history of Siegfried
and Wotan transposed into the key of actual life Night Falls On
The Gods would have been the logical consummation of Das
Rheingold and The Valkyrie instead of the operatic anachronism it
actually is.
But, as a matter of fact, Siegfried did not succeed and Bismarck
did. Roeckel was a prisoner whose mposonment made no difference;
Bakoonin broke up, not Walhall, but the International, which
ended in an undignified quarrel between him and Karl Marx. The
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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 Cavalry General by Xenophon: [34] "The one theoretic, the other practical."
But if you would rouse the emulation of your phylarchs, if you would
stir in each a personal ambition to appear at the head of his own
squadron in all ways splendidly appointed, the best incentive will be
your personal example. You must see to it that your own bodyguard[35]
are decked with choice accoutrement and arms; you must enforce on them
the need to practise shooting pertinaciously; you must expound to them
the theory of the javelin, yourself an adept in the art through
constant training.[36]
[35] Techn. {prodromoi}, possibly = the Hippotoxotai, or corps of 200
mounted archers--Scythians; cf. "Mem." III. iii. 11. Or, probably,
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