| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: foreign to the main subject, and with discussions about the education of
the guardians. In the Laws there is hardly anything but laws; not much is
said about the constitution. This, which he had intended to make more of
the ordinary type, he gradually brings round to the other or ideal form.
For with the exception of the community of women and property, he supposes
everything to be the same in both states; there is to be the same
education; the citizens of both are to live free from servile occupations,
and there are to be common meals in both. The only difference is that in
the Laws the common meals are extended to women, and the warriors number
about 5000, but in the Republic only 1000.'
(2) by Plato in the Laws (Book v.), from the side of the Republic:--
The Republic |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: merchant's household.
Guillaume had two daughters. The elder, Mademoiselle Virginie, was the
very image of her mother. Madame Guillaume, daughter of the Sieur
Chevrel, sat so upright in the stool behind her desk, that more than
once she had heard some wag bet that she was a stuffed figure. Her
long, thin face betrayed exaggerated piety. Devoid of attractions or
of amiable manners, Madame Guillaume commonly decorated her head--that
of a woman near on sixty--with a cap of a particular and unvarying
shape, with long lappets, like that of a widow. In all the
neighborhood she was known as the "portress nun." Her speech was curt,
and her movements had the stiff precision of a semaphore. Her eye,
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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 Glasses by Henry James: "Was he rough with her?" he anxiously asked.
"How can I tell what passed between them? I fled from the place."
My companion stared. "Do you mean to say her eyesight's going?"
"Heaven forbid! In that case how could she take life as she does?"
"How DOES she take life? That's the question!" He sat there
bewilderedly brooding; the tears rose to his lids; they reminded me
of those I had seen in Flora's the day I risked my enquiry. The
question he had asked was one that to my own satisfaction I was
ready to answer, but I hesitated to let him hear as yet all that my
reflections had suggested. I was indeed privately astonished at
their ingenuity. For the present I only rejoined that it struck me
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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 Miracle Mongers and Their Methods by Harry Houdini: hand, the girl forces back two or three
men, who, in unstable equilibrium and
under the oblique action of the thrust
exerted, are obliged to fall back. This
first experiment is so elementary and
infantile that it is not necessary to dwell upon
it. In order to show the relative sizes of
the persons, the artist has supposed the
little girl to be standing on a platform in
the first experiment, but in the experiment
that we witnessed this platform was
Miracle Mongers and Their Methods |
