| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: from foreign languages; they must be resolved into the letters out of which
they are composed, and therefore the letters must have a meaning. The
framers of language were aware of this; they observed that alpha was
adapted to express size; eta length; omicron roundness; nu inwardness; rho
accent rush or roar; lambda liquidity; gamma lambda the detention of the
liquid or slippery element; delta and tau binding; phi, psi, sigma, xi,
wind and cold, and so on. Plato's analysis of the letters of the alphabet
shows a wonderful insight into the nature of language. He does not
expressively distinguish between mere imitation and the symbolical use of
sound to express thought, but he recognises in the examples which he gives
both modes of imitation. Gesture is the mode which a deaf and dumb person
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: would have made tremendous concessions in other quarters: there
was no limit for instance to those she would have made to Captain
Everard; but what I have named was the most she was prepared to do
for Mr. Mudge. It was because HE was different that, in the oddest
way, she liked as well as deplored him; which was after all a proof
that the disparity, should they frankly recognise it, wouldn't
necessarily be fatal. She felt that, oleaginous--too oleaginous--
as he was, he was somehow comparatively primitive: she had once,
during the portion of his time at Cocker's that had overlapped her
own, seen him collar a drunken soldier, a big violent man who,
having come in with a mate to get a postal-order cashed, had made a
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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 In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: roads were made under his auspices and by his persuasion. The old
road between Hatiheu and Anaho was got under way from either side
on the ground that it would be pleasant for an evening promenade,
and brought to completion by working on the rivalry of the two
villages. The priest would boast in Hatiheu of the progress made
in Anaho, and he would tell the folk of Anaho, 'If you don't take
care, your neighbours will be over the hill before you are at the
top.' It could not be so done to-day; it could then; death, opium,
and depopulation had not gone so far; and the people of Hatiheu, I
was told, still vied with each other in fine attire, and used to go
out by families, in the cool of the evening, boat-sailing and
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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 Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: her life before the time when Lingard had, so to speak, kidnapped
her from Brow. Since then she had had Christian teaching, social
education, and a good glimpse of civilised life. Unfortunately
her teachers did not understand her nature, and the education
ended in a scene of humiliation, in an outburst of contempt from
white people for her mixed blood. She had tasted the whole
bitterness of it and remembered distinctly that the virtuous Mrs.
Vinck's indignation was not so much directed against the young
man from the bank as against the innocent cause of that young
man's infatuation. And there was also no doubt in her mind that
the principal cause of Mrs. Vinck's indignation was the thought
Almayer's Folly |
