| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Reef by Edith Wharton: decisive exchange of words.
Now, in the rattle of the wind about his ears, Darrow
continued to hear the mocking echo of her message:
"Unexpected obstacle." In such an existence as Mrs. Leath's,
at once so ordered and so exposed, he knew how small a
complication might assume the magnitude of an "obstacle;"
yet, even allowing as impartially as his state of mind
permitted for the fact that, with her mother-in-law always,
and her stepson intermittently, under her roof, her lot
involved a hundred small accommodations generally foreign to
the freedom of widowhood--even so, he could not but think
|
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 Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: "talking shop" they could find nothing else save wine and cookery
to converse about. They were men with minds fresh and open for
the discussion of topics which are not for a day only.
A man like Sokrates, living in such a community, did not need to
write down his wisdom. He had no such vast public as the modern
philosopher has to reach. He could hail any one he happened to
pass in the street, begin an argument with him forthwith, and set
a whole crowd thinking and inquiring about subjects the mere
contemplation of which would raise them for the moment above
matters of transient concern. For more than half a century any
citizen might have gratis the benefit of oral instruction from
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
