| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: death, certain to prove its own impotence, and be shattered to atoms the
moment you try to use it, to bring it into rude actual contact with
fact, and Nature, and the eternal laws? Faith to be strong must be
faith in something which is not one's self; faith in something eternal,
something objective, something true, which would exist just as much
though we and all the world disbelieved it. The strength of belief
comes from that which is believed in; if you separate it from that, it
becomes a mere self-opinion, a sensation of positiveness; and what sort
of strength that will give, history will tell us in the tragedies of the
Jews who opposed Titus, of the rabble who followed Walter the Penniless
to the Crusades, of the Munster Anabaptists, and many another sad page
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: morning. The reader will please to bear in mind, that, in a
slave state, an unsuccessful runaway is not only subjected to
cruel torture, and sold away to the far south, but he is
frequently execrated by the other slaves. He is charged with
making the condition of the other slaves intolerable, by laying
them all under the suspicion of their masters--subjecting them to
greater vigilance, and imposing greater limitations on their
privileges. I dreaded murmurs from this quarter. It is
difficult, too, for a slavemaster to believe that slaves escaping
have not been aided in their flight by some one of their fellow
slaves. When, therefore, a slave is missing, every slave on the
My Bondage and My Freedom |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Hellenica by Xenophon: meant not only the attachment of a friendly city, but the discovery of
a mine of wealth. The exhortations ended and the contingents
organised, he advanced against Methymna.
[25] Grote, "H. G." ix. 507.
[26] Al. Amedocus.
[27] For Seuthes, see above, "Hell." III. ii. 2, if the same.
[28] For the varying fortunes of the democrats at Byzantium in 408
B.C. and 405 B.C., see above, "Hell." I. iii. 18; II. ii. 2); for
the present moment, 390-389 B.C., see Demosth. "c. Lept." 475; for
the admission of Byzantium into the new naval confederacy in 378
B.C., see Hicks, 68; Kohler, "C. I. A." ii. 19; and for B.C. 363,
|
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 Under the Andes by Rex Stout: we wasted, searching for a soft spot to lie on--moss, reeds,
anything. We found none, of course; but even the hard, unyielding
rock was grateful to our exhausted bodies. We lay side by side,
using our ponchos for pillows; our clothing at least was dry.
I do not know how long I slept, but it seemed to me that I had
barely dozed off when I was awakened by something--what?
There was no sound to my strained ears. I sat up, gazing
intently into the darkness, shuddering without apparent reason.
Then I reflected that nothing is dangerous to a man who faces
death, and I laughed aloud--then trembled at the sound of my own
voice. Harry was in sound sleep beside me; his regular breathing
|
