| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: only and for the sake of the good; or 3) whether there may not be some
peculiar attraction, which draws together 'the neither good nor evil' for
the sake of the good and because of the evil; 4) whether friendship is
always mutual,--may there not be a one-sided and unrequited friendship?
This question, which, like many others, is only one of a laxer or stricter
use of words, seems to have greatly exercised the minds both of Aristotle
and Plato.
5) Can we expect friendship to be permanent, or must we acknowledge with
Cicero, 'Nihil difficilius quam amicitiam usque ad extremum vitae
permanere'? Is not friendship, even more than love, liable to be swayed by
the caprices of fancy? The person who pleased us most at first sight or
Lysis |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson: indifference for all that lay outside the circle of her love,
she had never so much as wondered who he was; but now she
recognised him, and found him ten years older, leaden and
springless, and stamped by an abiding sorrow.
'Oh Dick, Dick!' she said, and the tears began to shine upon
her face as she hid it in his bosom; his own fell thickly
too. They had a sad walk home, and that night, full of love
and good counsel, Dick exerted every art to please his
father, to convince him of his respect and affection, to heal
up this breach of kindness, and reunite two hearts. But
alas! the Squire was sick and peevish; he had been all day
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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 Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson: this machine, having been conveyed along the railways upon the
waggons to a position immediately under the bridge, were
elevated to its level, or thirty feet above the rock, in the
following manner. A chain-tackle was suspended over a pulley
from the cross-beam connecting the tops of the kingposts of
the bridge, which was worked by a winch-machine with wheel,
pinion, and barrel, round which last the chain was wound.
This apparatus was placed on the beacon side of the bridge, at
the distance of about twelve feet from the cross-beam and
pulley in the middle of the bridge. Immediately under the
cross-beam a hatch was formed in the roadway of the bridge,
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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 Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: his, almost the first time they met. She could not explain why it was.
She thought him quite astonishingly odd. When he knew her well enough
to tell her how he spent Monday and Wednesday and Saturday, she was
still more amused; she laughed till he laughed, too, without knowing
why. It seemed to her very odd that he should know as much about
breeding bulldogs as any man in England; that he had a collection of
wild flowers found near London; and his weekly visit to old Miss
Trotter at Ealing, who was an authority upon the science of Heraldry,
never failed to excite her laughter. She wanted to know everything,
even the kind of cake which the old lady supplied on these occasions;
and their summer excursions to churches in the neighborhood of London
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