| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: "No answer! -- that won't do!... Must see where the fellow is."...
There was a noise of heavy feet mounting upon the verandah. The feet
approached deliberately,-- halted beside him. Then, for long minutes,--
during which Hoichi felt his whole body shake to the beating of his
heart,-- there was dead silence.
At last the gruff voice muttered close to him:--
"Here is the biwa; but of the biwa-player I see -- only two ears!... So
that explains why he did not answer: he had no mouth to answer with --
there is nothing left of him but his ears... Now to my lord those ears I
will take -- in proof that the august commands have been obeyed, so far as
was possible"...
Kwaidan |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: and putting one in the place of the other. In this very argument, what
Polus only meant in a conventional sense has been affirmed by him to be a
law of nature. For convention says that 'injustice is dishonourable,' but
nature says that 'might is right.' And we are always taming down the
nobler spirits among us to the conventional level. But sometimes a great
man will rise up and reassert his original rights, trampling under foot all
our formularies, and then the light of natural justice shines forth.
Pindar says, 'Law, the king of all, does violence with high hand;' as is
indeed proved by the example of Heracles, who drove off the oxen of Geryon
and never paid for them.
This is the truth, Socrates, as you will be convinced, if you leave
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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 The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: congregations in France.
The absolute power which is assumed by the victors leads them
sometimes to extreme measures, such as the Convention's decree
that gold was to be replaced by paper, that goods were to be sold
at determined prices, &c. Very soon it runs up against a wall of
unavoidable necessities, which turn opinion against its tyranny,
and finally leave it defenceless before attack, as befell at the
end of the French Revolution. The same thing happened
recently to a Socialist Australian ministry composed almost
exclusively of working-men. It enacted laws so absurd, and
accorded such privileges to the trade unions, that public opinion
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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 Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories by Alice Dunbar: fragile, beautiful little sister, haunting, following, pleading.
Perchance, had Sister Josepha been in the world, the eyes would
have been an incident. But in this home of self-repression and
retrospection, it was a life-story. The eyes had gone their way,
doubtless forgetting the little sister they pitied; but the
little sister?
The days glided into weeks, the weeks into months. Thoughts of
escape had come to Sister Josepha, to flee into the world, to
merge in the great city where recognition was impossible, and,
working her way like the rest of humanity, perchance encounter
the eyes again.
The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories |
