| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: creed. It was not the basis of his creed. When he says, 'Forgive
your enemies,' it is not for the sake of the enemy, but for one's
own sake that he says so, and because love is more beautiful than
hate. In his own entreaty to the young man, 'Sell all that thou
hast and give to the poor,' it is not of the state of the poor that
he is thinking but of the soul of the young man, the soul that
wealth was marring. In his view of life he is one with the artist
who knows that by the inevitable law of self-perfection, the poet
must sing, and the sculptor think in bronze, and the painter make
the world a mirror for his moods, as surely and as certainly as the
hawthorn must blossom in spring, and the corn turn to gold at
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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 Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: night, and I have counted seventy tracks crossing the river. See,
Sahib, where Pudmini's leg-iron cut the bark of that tree! Yes;
she was there too."
They looked at one another and up and down, and they wondered.
For the ways of elephants are beyond the wit of any man, black or
white, to fathom.
"Forty years and five," said Machua Appa, "have I followed my
lord, the elephant, but never have I heard that any child of man
had seen what this child has seen. By all the Gods of the Hills,
it is--what can we say?" and he shook his head.
When they got back to camp it was time for the evening meal.
The Jungle Book |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: suspected to be a caricature of a great theory of knowledge, which Plato in
various ways and under many figures of speech is seeking to unfold. Poetry
has been converted into dogma; and it is not remarked that the Platonic
ideas are to be found only in about a third of Plato's writings and are not
confined to him. The forms which they assume are numerous, and if taken
literally, inconsistent with one another. At one time we are in the clouds
of mythology, at another among the abstractions of mathematics or
metaphysics; we pass imperceptibly from one to the other. Reason and fancy
are mingled in the same passage. The ideas are sometimes described as
many, coextensive with the universals of sense and also with the first
principles of ethics; or again they are absorbed into the single idea of
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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 Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: apartment. The officer in charge was one of my genial hosts of
the morning, but now upon his face was no sign of friendship.
"Kulan Tith commands your presence before him," he said. "Come!"
NEW ALLIES
The Warlord of Mars |
