| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: own turn comes.
Taboo in Schools
The suppression of economic knowledge, disastrous as it is, is quite
intelligible, its corrupt motive being as clear as the motive of a
burglar for concealing his jemmy from a policeman. But the other
great suppression in our schools, the suppression of the subject of
sex, is a case of taboo. In mankind, the lower the type, and the less
cultivated the mind, the less courage there is to face important
subjects objectively. The ablest and most highly cultivated people
continually discuss religion, politics, and sex: it is hardly an
exaggeration to say that they discuss nothing else with fully-awakened
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles would come crawling
about as soon as they heard of the winning ticket, would begin
whining like beggars, and fawning upon them with oily,
hypocritical smiles. Wretched, detestable people! If they were
given anything, they would ask for more; while if they were
refused, they would swear at them, slander them, and wish them
every kind of misfortune.
Ivan Dmitritch remembered his own relations, and their faces, at
which he had looked impartially in the past, struck him now as
repulsive and hateful.
"They are such reptiles!" he thought.
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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 Lysis by Plato: dissolved. It would be futile to retain the name when the reality has
ceased to be. That two friends should part company whenever the relation
between them begins to drag may be better for both of them. But then
arises the consideration, how should these friends in youth or friends of
the past regard or be regarded by one another? They are parted, but there
still remain duties mutually owing by them. They will not admit the world
to share in their difference any more than in their friendship; the memory
of an old attachment, like the memory of the dead, has a kind of sacredness
for them on which they will not allow others to intrude. Neither, if they
were ever worthy to bear the name of friends, will either of them entertain
any enmity or dislike of the other who was once so much to him. Neither
Lysis |
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 $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: and we cried; but she comforted me as well as she could, and said
we were sent into this world for a wise and good purpose, and must
do our duties without repining, take our life as we might find it,
live it for the best good of others, and never mind about the results;
they were not our affair. She said men who did like this would have
a noble and beautiful reward by and by in another world, and although
we animals would not go there, to do well and right without reward
would give to our brief lives a worthiness and dignity which in
itself would be a reward. She had gathered these things from time
to time when she had gone to the Sunday-school with the children,
and had laid them up in her memory more carefully than she had done
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