| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: for their true interests?
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: Can you tell me the pursuits which delight mankind--or rather,
if you would prefer, let me ask, and do you answer, which of them belong to
the pleasurable class, and which of them not? In the first place, what say
you of flute-playing? Does not that appear to be an art which seeks only
pleasure, Callicles, and thinks of nothing else?
CALLICLES: I assent.
SOCRATES: And is not the same true of all similar arts, as, for example,
the art of playing the lyre at festivals?
CALLICLES: Yes.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: of the work. "Is there so little business in the world that you must
be sending puzzles over the country? But that's the way people are
brought up. I should lose no end of time with the letters some people
send me, if Susan did not make them out for me. It's disgusting."
Here Caleb tossed the paper from him.
Any stranger peeping into the office at that moment might have
wondered what was the drama between the indignant man of business,
and the fine-looking young fellow whose blond complexion was getting
rather patchy as he bit his lip with mortification. Fred was struggling
with many thoughts. Mr. Garth had been so kind and encouraging at
the beginning of their interview, that gratitude and hopefulness had
Middlemarch |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: fish; and they drive a good trade also in their own fishery of
pilchards, which is hereabouts carried on with the greatest number
of vessels of any port in the west, except Falmouth.
A little to the southward of this town, and to the east of the
port, is Tor Bay, of which I know nothing proper to my observation,
more than that it is a very good road for ships, though sometimes
(especially with a southerly or south-east wind) ships have been
obliged to quit the bay and put out to sea, or run into Dartmouth
for shelter.
I suppose I need not mention that they had from the hilly part of
this town, and especially from the hills opposite to it, the noble
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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 Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: which is absolutely unique in the world. These officials pass their
days in verifying money-orders, documents, roles, registers, lists,
permits, custom-house receipts, payments, taxes received, taxes spent,
etc.; all of which the clerks write or copy. These stern judges push
the gift of exactitude, the genius of inquisition, the sharp-
sightedness of lynxes, the perspicacity of account-books to the point
of going over all the additions in search of subtractions. These
sublime martyrs to figures have been known to return to an army
commissary, after a delay of two years, some account in which there
was an error of two farthings. This is how and why it is that the
French system of administration, the purest and best on the globe has
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