| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Vailima Prayers & Sabbath Morn by Robert Louis Stevenson: with whom the sun now stands at the point of noon, bless, help,
console, and prosper them.
Our guard is relieved, the service of the day is over, and the hour
come to rest. We resign into thy hands our sleeping bodies, our
cold hearths, and open doors. Give us to awake with smiles, give
us to labour smiling. As the sun returns in the east, so let our
patience be renewed with dawn; as the sun lightens the world, so
let our loving-kindness make bright this house of our habitation.
ANOTHER FOR EVENING
LORD, receive our supplications for this house, family, and
country. Protect the innocent, restrain the greedy and the
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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 Symposium by Xenophon: to "write him down an ass"!
Pass on (said Callias); now it is your turn, Socrates. What have you
to say to justify your choice? How can you boast of so discredited an
art?[87]
[87] Sc. "the hold-door trade."
He answered: Let us first decide[88] what are the duties of the good
go-between;[89] and please to answer every question without
hesitating; let us know the points to which we mutually assent.[90]
Are you agreed to that?
[88] Or, "define in common." Cf. "Mem." IV. vi. 15.
[89] Or, "man-praiser." Cf. "The Manx Witch," p. 47 (T. E. Brown),
The Symposium |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Mansion by Henry van Dyke: Your grateful feeling does you credit. But don't overwork it.
Send him three or four hundred, if you like. You'll never
hear from it again, except in the letter of thanks. But for
Heaven's sake
don't be sentimental. Religion is not a matter of sentiment;
it's a matter of principle."
The face of the younger man changed now. But instead of becoming
fixed and graven, it seemed to melt into life by the heat of
an inward fire. His nostrils quivered with quick breath,
his lips were curled. "Principle!" he said. "You mean
principal--and
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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 The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: same purpose, France loses every seven years the interest of at least
two thousand millions,--that is to say, about one hundred millions; a
loss which in forty-two years amounts to six hundred million francs.
But she not only loses six hundred millions, she fails to create with
that money manufacturing or agricultural products, which represent a
loss of twelve hundred millions; for, if the manufactured product were
not double in value to its cost price, commerce could not exist. The
proletariat actually deprives itself of six hundred millions in wages.
These six hundred millions of dead loss (representing to a stern
economist a loss of twelve hundred millions, through lack of the
benefits of circulation) explain the condition of inferiority in which
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