| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: The first rule of good speaking is to know and speak the truth; as a
Spartan proverb says, 'true art is truth'; whereas rhetoric is an art of
enchantment, which makes things appear good and evil, like and unlike, as
the speaker pleases. Its use is not confined, as people commonly suppose,
to arguments in the law courts and speeches in the assembly; it is rather a
part of the art of disputation, under which are included both the rules of
Gorgias and the eristic of Zeno. But it is not wholly devoid of truth.
Superior knowledge enables us to deceive another by the help of
resemblances, and to escape from such a deception when employed against
ourselves. We see therefore that even in rhetoric an element of truth is
required. For if we do not know the truth, we can neither make the gradual
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake: There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,
That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved; so I said,
'Hush, Tom! never mind it, for, when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.'
And so he was quiet, and that very night,
As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight! -
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack,
Were all of them locked up in coffins of black.
And by came an angel, who had a bright key,
And he opened the coffins, and set them all free;
Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing, they run
Songs of Innocence and Experience |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad: swered.
"It was the captain. I had beaten the flagship by three
hours, and I was glad to hear the old man's voice, tremu-
lous and tired. 'Is it you, Marlow?' 'Mind the end of
that jetty, sir,' I cried.
"He approached cautiously, and brought up with the
deep-sea lead-line which we had saved--for the under-
writers. I eased my painter and fell alongside. He
sat, a broken figure at the stern, wet with dew, his hands
clasped in his lap. His men were asleep already. 'I
had a terrible time of it,' he murmured. 'Mahon is be-
Youth |
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 House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: was Clifford incapable of feeling the sentiment of poetry,--not,
perhaps, where it was highest or deepest, but where it was most
flitting and ethereal. It was impossible to foretell in what
exquisite verse the awakening spell might lurk; but, on raising
her eyes from the page to Clifford's face, Phoebe would be made
aware, by the light breaking through it, that a more delicate
intelligence than her own had caught a lambent flame from what
she read. One glow of this kind, however, was often the
precursor of gloom for many hours afterward; because, when the
glow left him, he seemed conscious of a missing sense and
power, and groped about for them, as if a blind man should go
House of Seven Gables |
