| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot: with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked
cloth over the rusty green iron table, saying: "If the lady and
gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and
gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden ..." I decided that
if the shaking of her breasts could be stopped,some of the fragments
of the afternoon might be collected, and I concentrated my attention
with careful subtlety to this end.
Conversation Galante
I observe: "Our sentimental friend the moon
Or possibly (fantastic, I confess)
It may be Prester John’s balloon
Prufrock/Other Observations |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: places in the island of Savaii. "Our lives are not worth living,"
was the burthen of the popular complaint. "We are groaning under
the oppression of these men. We would rather die than continue to
endure it." On his return to Apia, he made haste to communicate
his impressions to Brandeis. Brandeis replied in an epigram:
"Where there has been anarchy in a country, there must be
oppression for a time." But unfortunately the terms of the epigram
may be reversed; and personal supervision would have been more in
season than wit. The same observer who conveyed to him this
warning thinks that, if Brandeis had himself visited the districts
and inquired into complaints, the blow might yet have been averted
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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 The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: call forth a wholly new creature? a creature athrob with the life
but just begun breaks forth for him alone, from the outward form
that is fair for him, and faded for all the world besides. Does
he not love two women?--One of them, as others see her, is pale
and wan and sad; but the other, the unseen love that his heart
knows, is an angel who understands life through feeling, and is
adorned in all her glory only for love's high festivals.
The General left his post before sunrise, but not before he had
heard voices singing together, sweet voices full of tenderness
sounding faintly from the cell. When he came down to the foot of
the cliffs where his friends were waiting, he told them that
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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 Sophist by Plato: name which was to comprehend all these arts of purification, whether of
animate or inanimate bodies, the art of dialectic is in no wise particular
about fine words, if she may be only allowed to have a general name for all
other purifications, binding them up together and separating them off from
the purification of the soul or intellect. For this is the purification at
which she wants to arrive, and this we should understand to be her aim.
THEAETETUS: Yes, I understand; and I agree that there are two sorts of
purification, and that one of them is concerned with the soul, and that
there is another which is concerned with the body.
STRANGER: Excellent; and now listen to what I am going to say, and try to
divide further the first of the two.
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