| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Russia in 1919 by Arthur Ransome: mentioned by name the members of the party with whom
discussions had been carried on, withdrew the decision of
June 14th (excluding the S.R.'s from the Executive
Committee on the ground of their counter-revolutionary
tendencies) with regard to all groups of the party
which held themselves bound by the recently published
declarations, gave them the right equally with other parties
to share in the work of the Soviets, and notified the
administrative and judicial organs of the Republic to free
the arrested S.R.'s who shared the point of view expressed
in the recantations. The resolution was passed without
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: the automatic machinery of association, the more easily this moves
us. What can be more trivial than that old story of opening the
folio Shakspeare that used to lie in some ancient English hall and
finding the flakes of Christmas pastry between its leaves, shut up
in them perhaps a hundred years ago? And, lo! as one looks on
these poor relics of a bygone generation, the universe changes in
the twinkling of an eye; old George the Second is back again, and
the elder Pitt is coming into power, and General Wolfe is a fine,
promising young man, and over the Channel they are pulling the
Sieur Damiens to pieces with wild horses, and across the Atlantic
the Indians are tomahawking Hirams and Jonathans and Jonases at
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: what Mrs. Jordan had had: it was obviously not a source of
speculation with him that his sweetheart might pick up a husband.
She could see perfectly that this was not for a moment even what he
supposed she herself dreamed of. What she had done was simply to
give his sensibility another push into the dim vast of trade. In
that direction it was all alert, and she had whisked before it the
mild fragrance of a "connexion." That was the most he could see in
any account of her keeping in, on whatever roundabout lines, with
the gentry; and when, getting to the bottom of this, she quickly
proceeded to show him the kind of eye she turned on such people and
to give him a sketch of what that eye discovered, she reduced him
|
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 Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: weaker into the flood and thus floats safe. Why, the old apple of wisdom,
which Adam and Eve swallowed and thus lost their innocence, was a gentle
nursery drug compared with the new apple of competition, which, as soon
as chewed, instantly transforms the heart into a second brain. But why
worry, when nothing is final? Haven't you and I, for instance, lamented
the present rottenness of smart society? Why, when kings by the name of
George sat on the throne of England, society was just as drunken, just as
dissolute! Then a decent queen came, and society behaved itself; and now,
here we come round again to the Georges, only with the name changed!
There's nothing final. So, when things are as you don't like them,
remember that and bear them; and when they're as you do like them,
|
