| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber: natives if you haven't had coffee at Baumbach's. It
ain't hardly legal t' live in Milwaukee all this time
without ever having been inside of B--"
"Stop! If you do not tell me at once just where this
wonderful place may be found, and what one does when one
finds it, and how I happened to miss it, and why it is so
necessary to the proper understanding of the city--"
"I'll tell you what I'll do," said Blackie, grinning,
"I'll romp you over there to-morrow afternoon at four
o'clock. Ach Himmel! What will that for a grand time
be, no?"
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock: of bowling, coiling, pitching, hurling, racing, leaping, grinning,
wrestling or friendly dislocation of joints, and cudgel-playing
or amicable cracking of skulls, the trial of archery ensued.
The conqueror was to be rewarded with a golden arrow from the hand
of the Queen of the May, who was to be his partner in the dance till
the close of the feast. This stimulated the knight's emulation:
young Gamwell supplied him with a bow and arrow, and he took his
station among the foresters, but had the mortification to be out-shot
by them all, and to see one of them lodge the point of his arrow
in the golden ring of the centre, and receive the prize from the hand
of the beautiful Matilda, who smiled on him with particular grace.
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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 Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: your people before it comes to that.'
He winced and moved forward.
'I have left most of my work in order,' he said.
'You have been working hard up to now?' asked Rachel Borken.
'Yes. And now I have nothing more to do--and it seems strange....
And it's a bother, this illness and having to come down to
oneself. This doorway and the row of windows is well done; the
gray granite and just the line of gold, and then those mountains
beyond through that arch. It's very well done....'
Section 2
Karenin lay on the bed with a soft white rug about him, and
The Last War: A World Set Free |
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 Sophist by Plato: a kindred spirit and of the same intellectual family. For example, in the
Sophist Plato begins with the abstract and goes on to the concrete, not in
the lower sense of returning to outward objects, but to the Hegelian
concrete or unity of abstractions. In the intervening period hardly any
importance would have been attached to the question which is so full of
meaning to Plato and Hegel.
They differ however in their manner of regarding the question. For Plato
is answering a difficulty; he is seeking to justify the use of common
language and of ordinary thought into which philosophy had introduced a
principle of doubt and dissolution. Whereas Hegel tries to go beyond
common thought, and to combine abstractions in a higher unity: the
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