| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini: Meanwhile, M. de La Tour d'Azyr was climbing into his carriage. He
had spoken a word of farewell to M. de Kercadiou, and he had also
had a word for M. de Vilmorin in reply to which M. de Vilmorin had
bowed in assenting silence. The carriage rolled away, the powdered
footman in blue-and-gold very stiff behind it, M. de La Tour d'Azyr
bowing to mademoiselle, who waved to him in answer.
Then M. de Vilmorin put his arm through that of Andre Louis, and said
to him, "Come, Andre."
"But you'll stay to dine, both of you!" cried the hospitable Lord
of Gavrillac. "We'll drink a certain toast," he added, winking an
eye that strayed towards mademoiselle, who was approaching. He had
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Wheels of Chance by H. G. Wells: taking a complacent-looking fool down a peg, but it is just as
possible he did not know at the time that his stray shot had hit.
He had thrown it as a boy throws a stone at a bird. And it not
only demolished a foolish, happy conceit, but it wounded. It
touched Jessie grossly.
She did not hear it, he concluded from her subsequent bearing;
but during the supper they had in the little private dining-room,
though she talked cheerfully, he was preoccupied. Whiffs of
indistinct conversation, and now and then laughter, came in from
the inn parloiir through the pelargoniums in the open window.
Hoopdriver felt it must all be in the same strain,--at her
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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 God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: essentially a struggle--obscured, of course, by many complexities--
to reconcile and get into a relationship these two separate main
series of God-ideas.
Putting the leading id a part against evil.
The writer believes that these dogmas of relationship are not merely
extraneous to religion, but an impediment to religion. His aim in
this book is to give a statement of religion which is no longer
entangled in such speculations and disputes.
Let him add only one other note of explanation in this preface, and
that is to remark that except for one incidental passage (in Chapter
IV., 1), nowhere does he discuss the question of personal
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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 Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: Alder, Goodsir, and Laskey dredge among the lochs of the western
Highlands, and the sub-marine mountain glens of the Zetland sea;
but it has its own varieties, its own ever-fresh novelties: and in
spite of all the research which has been lavished on its shores, a
naturalist cannot, I suspect, work there for a winter without
discovering forms new to science, or meeting with curiosities which
have escaped all observers, since the lynx eye of Montagu espied
them full fifty years ago.
Follow us, then, reader, in imagination, out of the gay watering-
place, with its London shops and London equipages, along the broad
road beneath the sunny limestone cliff, tufted with golden furze;
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