| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Princess by Alfred Tennyson: Makes noble through the sensuous organism
That which is higher. O lift your natures up:
Embrace our aims: work out your freedom. Girls,
Knowledge is now no more a fountain sealed:
Drink deep, until the habits of the slave,
The sins of emptiness, gossip and spite
And slander, die. Better not be at all
Than not be noble. Leave us: you may go:
Today the Lady Psyche will harangue
The fresh arrivals of the week before;
For they press in from all the provinces,
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Young Forester by Zane Grey: covering of dry brush. One of them reached me, and struck so hard that I
lurched violently.
That was too much for the rickety loft floor. It was only a bit of brush
laid on a netting of slender poles. It creaked, rasped, and went down with
a crash. I alighted upon somebody, and knocked him to the floor. Whoever it
was, seized me with iron hands. I was buried, almost smothered, in the
dusty mass. My captor began to curse cheerfully, and I knew then that
Herky-Jerky had made me a prisoner.
XV. THE FIGHT
Herky hauled me out of the brush, and held me in the light. The others
scrambled from under the remains of the loft, and all viewed me curiously.
The Young Forester |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: admiration, even of philosophic speculation. Human righteousness and
love flows forth disinterestedly to all around it, however unconscious,
however unworthy they may be; human power associated with goodness,
seeks for objects which it may raise and benefit by that power. We must
confess this, with the Christian schools, or, with the Heathen schools,
we must allow another theory, which brought them into awful depths;
which may bring any generation which holds it into the same depths.
If Clement had asked the Neoplatonists: "You believe, Plotinus, in an
absolutely Good Being. Do you believe that it desires to shed forth its
goodness on all?" "Of course," they would have answered, "on those who
seek for it, on the philosopher."
|
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 Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde: We do not need these heavy fires now,
You scorch us.
Oh, I am burned up,
Can you do nothing? Water, give me water,
Or else more poison. No: I feel no pain -
Is it not curious I should feel no pain? -
And Death has gone away, I am glad of that.
I thought he meant to part us. Tell me, Guido,
Are you not sorry that you ever saw me?
GUIDO
I swear I would not have lived otherwise.
|
