| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: similar result among some Maori tribes; in many of the Paumotus a
slight increase is to be observed; and the Samoans are to-day as
healthy and at least as fruitful as before the change. Grant that
the Tahitians, the Maoris, and the Paumotuans have become inured to
the new conditions; and what are we to make of the Samoans, who
have never suffered?
Those who are acquainted only with a single group are apt to be
ready with solutions. Thus I have heard the mortality of the
Maoris attributed to their change of residence - from fortified
hill-tops to the low, marshy vicinity of their plantations. How
plausible! And yet the Marquesans are dying out in the same houses
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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 A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: affections and lusts." Then follow the good works, -- fasting,
watching, labor, of which some say and write so much, although
they know neither the source nor the purpose of these good works.
Therefore we will now also speak of them.
XVIII. This rest, namely, that our work cease and God alone work
in us, is accomplished in two ways. First, through our own
effort, secondly, through the effort or urging of others.
Our own effort is to be so made and ordered that, in the first
place, when we see our flesh, senses, will and thoughts tempting
us, we resist them and do not heed them, as the Wise Man says:
"Follow not thine own desires." And Moses, Deuteronomy xii: "Thou
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