| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith: that you can address a lady in private, and deny it in public: that you
have one story for us, and another for my daughter.
MARLOW. Daughter!--This lady your daughter?
HARDCASTLE. Yes, sir, my only daughter; my Kate; whose else should she
be?
MARLOW. Oh, the devil!
MISS HARDCASTLE. Yes, sir, that very identical tall squinting lady you
were pleased to take me for (courtseying); she that you addressed as
the mild, modest, sentimental man of gravity, and the bold, forward,
agreeable Rattle of the Ladies' Club. Ha! ha! ha!
MARLOW. Zounds! there's no bearing this; it's worse than death!
She Stoops to Conquer |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: name only. In the earlier dialogues the Socratic conception of universals
is illustrated by his genius; in the Phaedrus the nature of division is
explained; in the Republic the law of contradiction and the unity of
knowledge are asserted; in the later dialogues he is constantly engaged
both with the theory and practice of classification. These were the 'new
weapons,' as he terms them in the Philebus, which he was preparing for the
use of some who, in after ages, would be found ready enough to disown their
obligations to the great master, or rather, perhaps, would be incapable of
understanding them.
Numberless fallacies, as we are often truly told, have originated in a
confusion of the 'copula,' and the 'verb of existence.' Would not the
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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 Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake: Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing, they run
And wash in a river, and shine in the sun.
Then naked and white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind:
And the angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,
He'd have God for his father, and never want joy.
And so Tom awoke, and we rose in the dark,
And got with our bags and our brushes to work.
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm:
So, if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.
THE LITTLE BOY LOST
Songs of Innocence and Experience |
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 The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: To this attend, then, carefully,
And what thou wouldst, that execute!
Ne'er linger, ne'er o'erhasty be,
For time moves on with measured foot.
1821.*
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THE FOX AND CRANE.
ONCE two persons uninvited
Came to join my dinner table;
For the nonce they lived united,
Fox and crane yclept in fable.
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