| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Main Street by Sinclair Lewis: Gramercy Park. And I read, oh, everything.
"Through a cousin I learned that Julius Flickerbaugh was
sick and needed a partner. I came here. Julius got well.
He didn't like my way of loafing five hours and then doing
my work (really not so badly) in one. We parted.
"When I first came here I swore I'd `keep up my interests.'
Very lofty! I read Browning, and went to Minneapolis for the
theaters. I thought I was `keeping up.' But I guess the
Village Virus had me already. I was reading four copies of
cheap fiction-magazines to one poem. I'd put off the
Minneapolis trips till I simply had to go there on a lot of legal
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: unchangeable. And the IDEA of good is the source of knowledge and also of
Being, in which all the stages of sense and knowledge are gathered up and
from being hypotheses become realities.
Leaving the comparison with Plato we may now consider the value of this
invention of Hegel. There can be no question of the importance of showing
that two contraries or contradictories may in certain cases be both true.
The silliness of the so-called laws of thought ('All A = A,' or, in the
negative form, 'Nothing can at the same time be both A, and not A') has
been well exposed by Hegel himself (Wallace's Hegel), who remarks that 'the
form of the maxim is virtually self-contradictory, for a proposition
implies a distinction between subject and predicate, whereas the maxim of
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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 Enemies of Books by William Blades: This latter was, doubtless, cousin to him who deliberately cut
down all his books close to the text, because he had been several
times annoyed by readers who made marginal notes.
The indignities, too, suffered by some books in their lettering!
Fancy an early black-letter fifteenth-century quarto on Knighthood,
labelled "Tracts"; or a translation of Virgil, "Sermons"! The "Histories
of Troy," printed by Caxton, still exists with "Eracles" on
the back, as its title, because that name occurs several times
in the early chapters, and the binder was too proud to seek advice.
The words "Miscellaneous," or "Old Pieces," were sometimes used
when binders were at a loss for lettering, and many other instances
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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 The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: marrying Beaufort's bastards."
"Oh, I say--draw it mild!" Reggie Chivers and young
Newland protested, while Mr. Selfridge Merry looked
genuinely alarmed, and an expression of pain and disgust
settled on Mr. van der Luyden's sensitive face.
"Has he got any?" cried Mr. Sillerton Jackson,
pricking up his ears; and while Lefferts tried to turn the
question with a laugh, the old gentleman twittered into
Archer's ear: "Queer, those fellows who are always
wanting to set things right. The people who have the
worst cooks are always telling you they're poisoned
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