| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: enumerate the goods of life, first health, beauty next, thirdly, as the
writer of the song says, wealth honestly obtained.
GORGIAS: Yes, I know the song; but what is your drift?
SOCRATES: I mean to say, that the producers of those things which the
author of the song praises, that is to say, the physician, the trainer, the
money-maker, will at once come to you, and first the physician will say:
'O Socrates, Gorgias is deceiving you, for my art is concerned with the
greatest good of men and not his.' And when I ask, Who are you? he will
reply, 'I am a physician.' What do you mean? I shall say. Do you mean
that your art produces the greatest good? 'Certainly,' he will answer,
'for is not health the greatest good? What greater good can men have,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Polly of the Circus by Margaret Mayo: jaw was becoming very square.
"Because she's been here long enough."
"I don't agree with you there."
"Well, it don't make no difference whether you do or not. She's
got to go."
"Go?" echoed Douglas.
"Yes, sir-e-bob. We've made up our minds to that."
"And who do you mean by 'we'?"
"The members of this congregation," replied Strong, impatiently.
"Am I to understand that YOU are speaking for THEM?" There was a
deep frown between the young pastor's eyes. He was beginning 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 Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot: with his polygonal front foremost, and to order goods
to any extent from a confiding tradesman! Let the advocates of
a falsely called Philanthropy plead as they may for the abrogation
of the Irregular Penal Laws, I for my part have never known
an Irregular who was not also what Nature evidently intended him to be
-- a hypocrite, a misanthropist, and, up to the limits of his power,
a perpetrator of all manner of mischief.
Not that I should be disposed to recommend (at present)
the extreme measures adopted by some States, where an infant
whose angle deviates by half a degree from the correct angularity
is summarily destroyed at birth. Some of our highest and ablest men,
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions |
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 Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: monuments, and reckoned of a very elegant proportion by
contemporaries; and now, when the elegance is not so
apparent, the significance remains. You may perhaps look
with a smile on the profusion of Latin mottoes - some
crawling endwise up the shaft of a pillar, some issuing
on a scroll from angels' trumpets - on the emblematic
horrors, the figures rising headless from the grave, and
all the traditional ingenuities in which it pleased our
fathers to set forth their sorrow for the dead and their
sense of earthly mutability. But it is not a hearty sort
of mirth. Each ornament may have been executed by the
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