| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: Siena mi fe', disfecemi Maremma.'
307. _V._ St. Augustine's CONFESSIONS: 'to Carthage then I came,
where a cauldron of unholy loves sang all about mine ears'.
308. The complete text of the Buddha's Fire Sermon (which corresponds
in importance to the Sermon on the Mount) from which these words are taken,
will be found translated in the late Henry Clarke Warren's _Buddhism
in Translation_ (Harvard Oriental Series). Mr. Warren was one
of the great pioneers of Buddhist studies in the Occident.
309. From St. Augustine's CONFESSIONS again. The col-location
of these two representatives of eastern and western asceticism,
as the culmination of this part of the poem, is not an accident.
The Waste Land |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: All praises bestowed on her I received as made to a possession of
my own. We called each other familiarly by the name of cousin.
No word, no expression could body forth the kind of relation
in which she stood to me--my more than sister, since till death
she was to be mine only.
Chapter 2
We were brought up together; there was not quite a year difference
in our ages. I need not say that we were strangers to any species
of disunion or dispute. Harmony was the soul of our companionship,
and the diversity and contrast that subsisted in our characters drew
us nearer together. Elizabeth was of a calmer and more concentrated
Frankenstein |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: proceeds immediately from the hollow vein? And what can physicians
conjecture from feeling the pulse unless they know that according as the
blood changes its nature it can be rarefied by the warmth of the heart, in
a higher or lower degree, and more or less quickly than before? And if it
be inquired how this heat is communicated to the other members, must it
not be admitted that this is effected by means of the blood, which,
passing through the heart, is there heated anew, and thence diffused over
all the body? Whence it happens, that if the blood be withdrawn from any
part, the heat is likewise withdrawn by the same means; and although the
heart were as-hot as glowing iron, it would not be capable of warming the
feet and hands as at present, unless it continually sent thither new
Reason Discourse |
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 Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: How changed the condition of things! Previously, to sail from
Malta to Gibraltar by an eastward course would have involved
the passage of the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean,
the Pacific, the Atlantic; but what had happened now?
Why, Gibraltar had been reached as if it had been just at Corfu,
and some three hundred and thirty degrees of the earth's circuit
had vanished utterly.
After allowing for a certain margin of miscalculation, the main fact
remained undeniable; and the necessary inference that Lieutenant Procope
drew from the round of the earth being completed in 1 ,400 miles,
was that the earth's diameter had been reduced by about fifteen
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