| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs: in sight of the stranded wreck he put all such thoughts
from him and made straight for the helpless hulk
to glean whatever of salvage might yet remain within
her battered hull.
The old rascal had little thought of the priceless
treasure hidden beneath the Ithaca's clean swept deck
as he ordered his savage henchmen up her sides while he
lay back upon his sleeping mat beneath the canopy which
protected his vice-regal head from the blistering
tropic sun.
Number Thirteen watched the wild head hunters with
The Monster Men |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: the body rather than of the soul--the most foolish beings are the objects
of this love which desires only to gain an end, but never thinks of
accomplishing the end nobly, and therefore does good and evil quite
indiscriminately. The goddess who is his mother is far younger than the
other, and she was born of the union of the male and female, and partakes
of both. But the offspring of the heavenly Aphrodite is derived from a
mother in whose birth the female has no part,--she is from the male only;
this is that love which is of youths, and the goddess being older, there is
nothing of wantonness in her. Those who are inspired by this love turn to
the male, and delight in him who is the more valiant and intelligent
nature; any one may recognise the pure enthusiasts in the very character of
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