| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: richly deserved, and then, having tied old Kaptein up to the disselboom
with a reim, they took their assegais and sticks, and started. I would
have gone too, only I knew that somebody must look after the waggon, and
I did not like to leave either of the boys with it at night. I was in a
very bad temper, indeed, although I was pretty well used to these sort
of occurrences, and soothed myself by taking a rifle and going to kill
something. For a couple of hours I poked about without seeing anything
that I could get a shot at, but at last, just as I was again within
seventy yards of the waggon, I put up an old Impala ram from behind a
mimosa thorn. He ran straight for the waggon, and it was not till he
was passing within a few feet of it that I could get a decent shot at
Long Odds |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Proposed Roads To Freedom by Bertrand Russell: not to be working, were idle through no fault
of their own. We find at present that a man who
has a small income from investments, just sufficient
to keep him from actual want, almost always prefers
to find some paid work in order to be able to afford
luxuries. So it would be, presumably, in such a
community as we are imagining. At the same time, the
man who felt a vocation for some unrecognized work
of art or science or thought would be free to follow his
desire, provided he were willing to ``scorn delights
and live laborious days.'' And the comparatively
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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 Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin: According to the Rev. Mr. Taplin, rage, with the Australians, is expressed
by the lips being protruded, the eyes being widely open; and in the case
of the women by their dancing about and casting dust into the air.
Another observer speaks of the native men, when enraged, throwing their
arms wildly about.
[13] Le Brun, in his well-known `Conference sur l'Expression'
(`La Physionomie, par Lavater,' edit. of 1820, vol. lx. p. 268), remarks
that anger is expressed by the clenching of the fists. See, to the
same effect, Huschke, `Mimices et Physiognomices, Fragmentum Physiologicum,'
1824, p. 20. Also Sir C. Bell, `Anatomy of Expression,' p. 219.
I have received similar accounts, except as to the clenching of the fists,
Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals |
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 Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri: recidivism.
So that the tribunals of Europe, as M. Prins observed, with the
absolute impersonality of modern justice, allow their sentences to
fall upon unhappy wretches as a tap allows water to fall drop by
drop upon the ground.
Without counting fines or police detention, there were sentenced
in Italy, in the ten years 1880-89, to various terms of
imprisonment, 587,938 persons by the Pretors, and 465,130 by the
Correctional Tribunals. That is, more than a million terms in the
minor courts within ten years!
And the total number sentenced in Italy to various punishments, by
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