| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: forms a lofty submarine mountain, with sides steeper even
than those of the most abrupt volcanic cone. The saucer-shaped
summit is nearly ten miles across; and every single
atom, [10] from the least particle to the largest fragment of
rock, in this great pile, which however is small compared
with very many other lagoon-islands, bears the stamp of
having been subjected to organic arrangement. We feel surprise
when travellers tell us of the vast dimensions of the
Pyramids and other great ruins, but how utterly insignificant
are the greatest of these, when compared to these mountains
of stone accumulated by the agency of various minute
The Voyage of the Beagle |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: and the Parthian disaster compared with that in Sicily. But here
it will be well for me to entreat the reader, in all courtesy, not
to think that I contend with Thucydides in matters so pathetically,
vividly, and eloquently, beyond all imitation, and even beyond
himself, expressed by him; nor to believe me guilty of the like
folly with Timaeus, who, hoping in his history to surpass
Thucydides in art, and to make Philistus appear a trifler and a
novice, pushes on in his descriptions, through all the battles,
sea-fights, and public speeches, in recording which they have been
most successful, without meriting so much as to be compared in
Pindar's phrase, to
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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 A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: as a guest of the Marseilles pilots! Not a footstep, except my
own, not a sigh, not a whispering echo of the usual revelry going
on in the narrow, unspeakable lanes of the Old Town reached my
ear--and suddenly, with a terrific jingling rattle of iron and
glass, the omnibus of the Jolliette on its last journey swung
around the corner of the dead wall which faces across the paved
road the characteristic angular mass of the Fort St. Jean. Three
horses trotted abreast, with the clatter of hoofs on the granite
setts, and the yellow, uproarious machine jolted violently behind
them, fantastic, lighted up, perfectly empty, and with the driver
apparently asleep on his swaying perch above that amazing racket.
A Personal Record |
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 Meno by Plato: ANYTUS: Yes certainly,--if he wanted to be so.
SOCRATES: But would he not have wanted? He would, at any rate, have
desired to make his own son a good man and a gentleman; he could not have
been jealous of him, or have intentionally abstained from imparting to him
his own virtue. Did you never hear that he made his son Cleophantus a
famous horseman; and had him taught to stand upright on horseback and hurl
a javelin, and to do many other marvellous things; and in anything which
could be learned from a master he was well trained? Have you not heard
from our elders of him?
ANYTUS: I have.
SOCRATES: Then no one could say that his son showed any want of capacity?
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