| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence: of the eighteenth century, and added on to, till it was a warren of a
place without much distinction. It stood on an eminence in a rather
line old park of oak trees, but alas, one could see in the near
distance the chimney of Tevershall pit, with its clouds of steam and
smoke, and on the damp, hazy distance of the hill the raw straggle of
Tevershall village, a village which began almost at the park gates, and
trailed in utter hopeless ugliness for a long and gruesome mile:
houses, rows of wretched, small, begrimed, brick houses, with black
slate roofs for lids, sharp angles and wilful, blank dreariness.
Connie was accustomed to Kensington or the Scotch hills or the Sussex
downs: that was her England. With the stoicism of the young she took in
Lady Chatterley's Lover |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: SOCRATES: I too speak rather in ignorance; I only conjecture. And yet
that knowledge differs from true opinion is no matter of conjecture with
me. There are not many things which I profess to know, but this is most
certainly one of them.
MENO: Yes, Socrates; and you are quite right in saying so.
SOCRATES: And am I not also right in saying that true opinion leading the
way perfects action quite as well as knowledge?
MENO: There again, Socrates, I think you are right.
SOCRATES: Then right opinion is not a whit inferior to knowledge, or less
useful in action; nor is the man who has right opinion inferior to him who
has knowledge?
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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 Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson: educating the boy? And education, philosophers are agreed, is the
most philosophical of duties. What can be more heavenly to poor
mankind than to have one's hobby grow into a duty to the State?
Then, indeed, do the ways of life become ways of pleasantness.
Never had the Doctor seen reason to be more content with his
endowments. Philosophy flowed smoothly from his lips. He was so
agile a dialectician that he could trace his nonsense, when
challenged, back to some root in sense, and prove it to be a sort
of flower upon his system. He slipped out of antinomies like a
fish, and left his disciple marvelling at the rabbi's depth.
Moreover, deep down in his heart the Doctor was disappointed with
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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 Agesilaus by Xenophon: of divers weapons, did not even so forget his duty to God, and gave
orders to let them go whithersoever they chose, nor suffered them to
be ill-treated, but ordered his bodyguard of cavalry to escort them
out of reach of danger.
[10] I.e. "they had kept their arms."
[11] See Plut. "Ages." xix.; Paus. ix. 34.
And now that the battle had ceased, it was a sight to see where the
encounter took place, the earth bedabbled with gore, the dead lying
cheek by jowl, friend and foe together, and the great shields hacked
and broken to pieces, and the spears snapped asunder, the daggers
lying bare of sheaths, some on the ground, some buried in the bodies,
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