| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Astoria by Washington Irving: foot of the cliffs, and sometimes a reach of still water would
intervene like a smooth mirror between the foaming rapids.
As through the preceding day, they journeyed on without finding,
except in one instance, any place where they could get down to
the river's edge, and they were fain to allay the thirst caused
by hard travelling, with the water collected in the hollow of the
rocks.
In the course of their march on the following morning, they fell
into a beaten horse path leading along the river, which showed
that they were in the neighborhood of some Indian village or
encampment. They had not proceeded far along it, when they met
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from On Horsemanship by Xenophon: does as you wish, to show him some kindness in return, and when he is
disobedient to chastise him. This principle, though capable of being
stated in a few words, is one which holds good throughout the whole of
horsemanship. As, for instance, a horse will more readily take the
bit, if each time he accepts it some good befalls him; or, again, he
will leap ditches and spring up embankments and perform all the other
feats incumbent on him, if he be led to associate obedience to the
word of command with relaxation.[13]
[13] Lit. "if every time he performs the word of command he is led to
expect some relaxation."
IX
On Horsemanship |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: dangerous illness--a wise physician, or an ignorant one?
A wise one.
You think, I said, that to act with a wise man is more fortunate than to
act with an ignorant one?
He assented.
Then wisdom always makes men fortunate: for by wisdom no man would ever
err, and therefore he must act rightly and succeed, or his wisdom would be
wisdom no longer.
We contrived at last, somehow or other, to agree in a general conclusion,
that he who had wisdom had no need of fortune. I then recalled to his mind
the previous state of the question. You remember, I said, our making the
|
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 Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne: caged brute; his mind whirling through the universe of thought
and memory; his eyes, as he went, skimming the legends on the
wall. The crumbling whitewash was all full of them: Tahitian
names, and French, and English, and rude sketches of ships
under sail and men at fisticuffs.
It came to him of a sudden that he too must leave upon these
walls the memorial of his passage. He paused before a clean
space, took the pencil out, and pondered. Vanity, so hard to
dislodge, awoke in him. We call it vanity at least; perhaps
unjustly. Rather it was the bare sense of his existence prompted
him; the sense of his life, the one thing wonderful, to which he
|
