| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: of measures and instruments, attains by their help to a greater degree of
accuracy than the other arts.
PROTARCHUS: How is that?
SOCRATES: In ship-building and house-building, and in other branches of
the art of carpentering, the builder has his rule, lathe, compass, line,
and a most ingenious machine for straightening wood.
PROTARCHUS: Very true, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Then now let us divide the arts of which we were speaking into
two kinds,--the arts which, like music, are less exact in their results,
and those which, like carpentering, are more exact.
PROTARCHUS: Let us make that division.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: all expectations of hailing a vessel bearing news from Europe were
entirely falsified, so that more and more each member of the crew began
to be conscious of his isolation, and to believe that the schooner,
like a second Noah's ark, carried the sole survivors of a calamity
that had overwhelmed the earth.
On the 9th of February the _Dobryna_ passed over the site of the city of Dido,
the ancient Byrsa--a Carthage, however, which was now more completely
destroyed than ever Punic Carthage had been destroyed by Scipio Afri-canus
or Roman Carthage by Hassan the Saracen.
In the evening, as the sun was sinking below the eastern horizon,
Captain Servadac was lounging moodily against the taffrail.
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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 Poems by Bronte Sisters: pasture of the moor-sheep. Unless that light and freshness are
innate and self-sustained, the drear prospect of a Yorkshire moor
will be found as barren of poetic as of agricultural interest:
where the love of wild nature is strong, the locality will
perhaps be clung to with the more passionate constancy, because
from the hill-lover's self comes half its charm.
My sister Emily loved the moors. Flowers brighter than the rose
bloomed in the blackest of the heath for her; out of a sullen
hollow in a livid hill-side her mind could make an Eden. She
found in the bleak solitude many and dear delights; and not the
least and best loved was--liberty.
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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 The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: by natural limitation incapable of seeing anything from anyone
else's point of view. With perfect simplicity, he offers himself
as a sweetheart to them. But they are thoughtless, elemental,
only half real things, much like modern young ladies. That the
poor dwarf is repulsive to their sense of physical beauty and
their romantic conception of heroism, that he is ugly and
awkward, greedy and ridiculous, disposes for them of his claim to
live and love. They mock him atrociously, pretending to fall in
love with him at first sight, and then slipping away and making
game of him, heaping ridicule and disgust on the poor wretch
until he is beside himself with mortification and rage. They
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