| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from I Have A Dream by Martin Luther King, Jr.: of the Constitution and the declaration of Independence, they
were signing a promissory note to which every American was to
fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be
guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory
note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of
honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro
people a bad check which has come back marked "insufficient
funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is
bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: self-indulgence are virtue and happiness; all the rest is mere talk.'
Socrates compliments Callicles on his frankness in saying what other men
only think. According to his view, those who want nothing are not happy.
'Why,' says Callicles, 'if they were, stones and the dead would be happy.'
Socrates in reply is led into a half-serious, half-comic vein of
reflection. 'Who knows,' as Euripides says, 'whether life may not be
death, and death life?' Nay, there are philosophers who maintain that even
in life we are dead, and that the body (soma) is the tomb (sema) of the
soul. And some ingenious Sicilian has made an allegory, in which he
represents fools as the uninitiated, who are supposed to be carrying water
to a vessel, which is full of holes, in a similarly holey sieve, and this
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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 Pericles by William Shakespeare: PERICLES.
Come, my Marina.
[Exeunt.]
SCENE II. Enter Gower, before the temple of Diana at Ephesus.
GOWER.
Now our sands are almost run;
More a little, and then dumb.
This, my last boon, give me,
For such kindness must relieve me,
That you aptly will suppose
What pageantry, what feats, what shows,
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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 Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: test at close quarters what he had heard of him at a distance; so he
said to him, "Despair not, valiant knight, nor regard as an untoward
fate the position in which thou findest thyself; it may be that by
these slips thy crooked fortune will make itself straight; for
heaven by strange circuitous ways, mysterious and incomprehensible
to man, raises up the fallen and makes rich the poor."
Don Quixote was about to thank him, when they heard behind them a
noise as of a troop of horses; there was, however, but one, riding
on which at a furious pace came a youth, apparently about twenty years
of age, clad in green damask edged with gold and breeches and a
loose frock, with a hat looped up in the Walloon fashion,
Don Quixote |
