| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Statesman by Plato: suitable for each particular case.
YOUNG SOCRATES: He cannot be expected to do so.
STRANGER: He will lay down laws in a general form for the majority,
roughly meeting the cases of individuals; and some of them he will deliver
in writing, and others will be unwritten; and these last will be
traditional customs of the country.
YOUNG SOCRATES: He will be right.
STRANGER: Yes, quite right; for how can he sit at every man's side all
through his life, prescribing for him the exact particulars of his duty?
Who, Socrates, would be equal to such a task? No one who really had the
royal science, if he had been able to do this, would have imposed upon
Statesman |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pericles by William Shakespeare: Peace, peace, and give experience tongue.
They do abuse the king that flatter him:
For flattery is the bellows blows up sin;
The thing the which is flatter'd, but a spark,
To which that blast gives heat and stronger glowing:
Whereas reproof, obedient and in order,
Fits kings, as they are men, for they may err.
When Signior Sooth here does proclaim a peace,
He flatters you, makes war upon your life.
Prince, pardon me, or strike me, if you please;
I cannot be much lower than my knees.
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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 Symposium by Plato: appear, affords an illustration of the power ascribed to the loves of man
in the speech of Pausanias. He does not suppose his feelings to be
peculiar to himself: there are several other persons in the company who
have been equally in love with Socrates, and like himself have been
deceived by him. The singular part of this confession is the combination
of the most degrading passion with the desire of virtue and improvement.
Such an union is not wholly untrue to human nature, which is capable of
combining good and evil in a degree beyond what we can easily conceive. In
imaginative persons, especially, the God and beast in man seem to part
asunder more than is natural in a well-regulated mind. The Platonic
Socrates (for of the real Socrates this may be doubted: compare his public
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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 Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot: Portrait of a Lady
Preludes
Rhapsody on a Windy Night
Morning at the Window
The Boston Evening Transcript
Aunt Helen
Cousin Nancy
Mr. Apollinax
Hysteria
Conversation Galante
La Figlia Che Piange
Prufrock/Other Observations |
