| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Mother by Owen Wister: short stories by various authors, in a volume entitled A House Party. It
has been slightly remodelled for separate publication.
June 7, 1907, OWEN WISTER
MOTHER
When handsome young Richard Field--he was very handsome and very young--
announced to our assembled company that if his turn should really come to
tell us a story, the story should be no invention of his fancy, but a
page of truth, a chapter from his own life, in which himself was the hero
and a lovely, innocent girl was the heroine, his wife at once looked
extremely uncomfortable. She changed the reclining position in which she
had been leaning back in her chair, and she sat erect, with a hand closed
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians by Martin Luther: never grow tired of warring against us. These, our enemies, are many: Our
own flesh, the world, the Law, sin, death, the wrath and judgment of God,
and the devil himself.
The arguments which the false apostles advanced impress people to this
day. "Who are you to dissent from the fathers and the entire Church, and to
bring a contradictory doctrine? Are you wiser than so many holy men,
wiser than the whole Church?" When Satan, abetted by our own reason,
advances these arguments against us, we lose heart, unless we keep on
saying to ourselves: "I don't care if Cyprian, Ambrose, Augustine, Peter,
Paul, John, or an angel from heaven, teaches so and so. I know that I teach
the truth of God in Christ Jesus."
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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 Options by O. Henry: she had cast off the roles of Job and Little-Red-Riding-Hood. The
young man stopped at the foot of the stairs and coughed distractedly.
He felt marooned, held up, attacked, assailed, levied upon, sacked,
assessed, panhandled, browbeaten, though he knew not why. It was the
look in Hetty's eyes that did it. In them he saw the Jolly Roger fly
to the masthead and an able seaman with a dirk between his teeth
scurry up the ratlines and nail it there. But as yet he did not know
that the cargo he carried was the thing that had caused him to be so
nearly blown out of the water without even a parley.
"Beg your pardon," said Hetty, as sweetly as her dilute acetic acid
tones permitted, "but did you find that onion on the stairs? There
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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 Parmenides by Plato: supposed in after ages to be peculiarly characteristic of him. How can he
have placed himself so completely without them? How can he have ever
persisted in them after seeing the fatal objections which might be urged
against them? The consideration of this difficulty has led a recent critic
(Ueberweg), who in general accepts the authorised canon of the Platonic
writings, to condemn the Parmenides as spurious. The accidental want of
external evidence, at first sight, seems to favour this opinion.
In answer, it might be sufficient to say, that no ancient writing of equal
length and excellence is known to be spurious. Nor is the silence of
Aristotle to be hastily assumed; there is at least a doubt whether his use
of the same arguments does not involve the inference that he knew the work.
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