| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: some of the patriarchs will turn out."
"No, but will they?"
"Like as not. Of course they are pretty exclusive. They hardly
ever show themselves to the common public. I believe they never
turn out except for an eleventh-hour convert. They wouldn't do it
then, only earthly tradition makes a grand show pretty necessary on
that kind of an occasion."
"Do they an turn out, Sandy?"
"Who? - all the patriarchs? Oh, no - hardly ever more than a
couple. You will be here fifty thousand years - maybe more -
before you get a glimpse of all the patriarchs and prophets. Since
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: as it were, unfilled. If at that critical moment some able and
ambitious man grasps the supreme power, he will find the road to
every kind of usurpation open before him. If he does but attend
for some time to the material prosperity of the country, no more
will be demanded of him. Above all he must insure public
tranquillity: men who are possessed by the passion of physical
gratification generally find out that the turmoil of freedom
disturbs their welfare, before they discover how freedom itself
serves to promote it. If the slightest rumor of public commotion
intrudes into the petty pleasures of private life, they are
aroused and alarmed by it. The fear of anarchy perpetually haunts
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: nation by enervation, whose women remained active, virile, and laborious.
The conception which again and again appears to have haunted successive
societies, that it was a possibility for the human male to advance in
physical power and intellectual vigour, while his companion female became
stationary and inactive, taking no share in the labours of society beyond
the passive fulfilment of sexual functions, has always been negated. It
has ended as would end the experiment of a man seeking to raise a breed of
winning race-horses out of unexercised, short-winded, knock-kneed mares.
No, more disastrously! For while the female animal transmits herself to
her descendant only or mainly by means of germinal inheritance, and through
the influence she may exert over it during gestation, the human female, by
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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 Marie by H. Rider Haggard: up the business? What is the use of kicking against the pricks?'
"'If one wears stout boots and kicks hard enough, the pricks give way,'
said Hernan. 'Six months is a long time, my uncle.'
"'It may be so, cousin,' I said; 'but remember that neither six months
nor six years, nor six thousand years, are long enough to make me marry
any man except Allan Quatermain, who has just rescued you from death.
Do you understand?'
"'Yes,' he replied, 'I understand that you will not marry me. Only then
I promise that you shall not marry either Allan Quatermain or any other
man.'
"'God will decide that,' I answered, and came away, leaving him and my
Marie |
