| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs: but his mouth and lips were better molded. All in all,
Ja was an impressive and handsome creature, and he talked
well too, even in the miserable makeshift language we
were compelled to use.
During our conversation Ja had taken the paddle and was
propelling the skiff with vigorous strokes toward a large
island that lay some half-mile from the mainland.
The skill with which he handled his crude and awkward
craft elicited my deepest admiration, since it had been
so short a time before that I had made such pitiful work
of it.
At the Earth's Core |
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 Gorgias by Plato: usually conceited, any more than the engineer, who is not at all behind
either the general, or the pilot, or any one else, in his saving power, for
he sometimes saves whole cities. Is there any comparison between him and
the pleader? And if he were to talk, Callicles, in your grandiose style,
he would bury you under a mountain of words, declaring and insisting that
we ought all of us to be engine-makers, and that no other profession is
worth thinking about; he would have plenty to say. Nevertheless you
despise him and his art, and sneeringly call him an engine-maker, and you
will not allow your daughters to marry his son, or marry your son to his
daughters. And yet, on your principle, what justice or reason is there in
your refusal? What right have you to despise the engine-maker, and the
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