| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: The old quarrel between philosophy and poetry, which in the Republic leads
to their final separation, is already working in the mind of Plato, and is
embodied by him in the contrast between Socrates and Ion. Yet here, as in
the Republic, Socrates shows a sympathy with the poetic nature. Also, the
manner in which Ion is affected by his own recitations affords a lively
illustration of the power which, in the Republic, Socrates attributes to
dramatic performances over the mind of the performer. His allusion to his
embellishments of Homer, in which he declares himself to have surpassed
Metrodorus of Lampsacus and Stesimbrotus of Thasos, seems to show that,
like them, he belonged to the allegorical school of interpreters. The
circumstance that nothing more is known of him may be adduced in
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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 Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: more because they must, like Tom. But, I assure you, that three
o'clock on a midsummer morning is the pleasantest time of all the
twenty-four hours, and all the three hundred and sixty-five days;
and why every one does not get up then, I never could tell, save
that they are all determined to spoil their nerves and their
complexions by doing all night what they might just as well do all
day. But Tom, instead of going out to dinner at half-past eight at
night, and to a ball at ten, and finishing off somewhere between
twelve and four, went to bed at seven, when his master went to the
public-house, and slept like a dead pig; for which reason he was as
piert as a game-cock (who always gets up early to wake the maids),
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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 The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories by Alice Dunbar: and Grandpere Colomes was strict and stern.
And now La Juanita had set her small foot down with a passionate
stamp before Grandpere Colomes' very face, and tossed her black
curls about her wilful head, and said she would go to the pier
this evening to meet her Mercer. All Mandeville knew this, and
cast its furtive glances alternately at La Juanita with two big
pink spots in her cheeks, and at the entrance to the pier,
expecting Grandpere Colomes and a scene.
The sun cast red glows and violet shadows over the pier, and the
pines murmured a soft little vesper hymn among themselves up on
the beach, as the "New Camelia" swung herself in, crabby,
The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories |
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 Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: bonfire that occupies the kernel of our system.
I met but one human being that forenoon, a dark military-looking
wayfarer, who carried a game-bag on a baldric; but he made a remark
that seems worthy of record. For when I asked him if he were
Protestant or Catholic -
'Oh,' said he, 'I make no shame of my religion. I am a Catholic.'
He made no shame of it! The phrase is a piece of natural
statistics; for it is the language of one in a minority. I thought
with a smile of Bavile and his dragoons, and how you may ride
rough-shod over a religion for a century, and leave it only the
more lively for the friction. Ireland is still Catholic; the
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