| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs: the man's head in her arms covered the face with kisses.
"Virginia!" cried the professor. "Are you mad, child?"
"I am not mad," she moaned, "not yet. I love him.
Man or monster, it would have been all the same to me,
for I loved him."
Her father turned away, burying his face in his hands.
"God!" he muttered. "What an awful punishment you
have visited upon me for the sin of the thing I did."
The silence which followed was broken by Sing who had
kneeled opposite Virginia upon the other side of Bulan,
where he was feeling the giant's wrists and pressing
The Monster Men |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: refinement and good taste. Their noble and simple manners at
first made no great impression on the painter, but subsequently,
as he recalled all the details of the incident, he was greatly
struck by them.
When they reached the floor beneath that occupied by the
painter's studio, the old lady gently observed, "Adelaide, you
left the door open."
"That was to come to my assistance," said the painter, with a
grateful smile.
"You came down just now, mother," replied the young girl, with a
blush.
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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 A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson: All through the meadows the horses and cattle:
All of the sights of the hill and the plain
Fly as thick as driving rain;
And ever again, in the wink of an eye,
Painted stations whistle by.
Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,
All by himself and gathering brambles;
Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;
And here is the green for stringing the daisies!
Here is a cart runaway in the road
Lumping along with man and load;
A Child's Garden of Verses |
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 Crito by Plato: thesis about which casuists might disagree. Shelley (Prose Works) is of
opinion that Socrates 'did well to die,' but not for the 'sophistical'
reasons which Plato has put into his mouth. And there would be no
difficulty in arguing that Socrates should have lived and preferred to a
glorious death the good which he might still be able to perform. 'A
rhetorician would have had much to say upon that point.' It may be
observed however that Plato never intended to answer the question of
casuistry, but only to exhibit the ideal of patient virtue which refuses to
do the least evil in order to avoid the greatest, and to show his master
maintaining in death the opinions which he had professed in his life. Not
'the world,' but the 'one wise man,' is still the paradox of Socrates in
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