| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne: so he resolved to make a clean breast of it.
"Listen to me," said Fix abruptly. "I am not, as you think,
an agent of the members of the Reform Club--"
"Bah!" retorted Passepartout, with an air of raillery.
"I am a police detective, sent out here by the London office."
"You, a detective?"
"I will prove it. Here is my commission."
Passepartout was speechless with astonishment when Fix displayed
this document, the genuineness of which could not be doubted.
"Mr. Fogg's wager," resumed Fix, "is only a pretext, of which you
and the gentlemen of the Reform are dupes. He had a motive
Around the World in 80 Days |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: to accept the mere statement on our own authority and that of others? What
do you say?
EUTHYPHRO: We should enquire; and I believe that the statement will stand
the test of enquiry.
SOCRATES: We shall know better, my good friend, in a little while. The
point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy
is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of
the gods.
EUTHYPHRO: I do not understand your meaning, Socrates.
SOCRATES: I will endeavour to explain: we, speak of carrying and we speak
of being carried, of leading and being led, seeing and being seen. You
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Smalcald Articles by Dr. Martin Luther: exalted above Him. Thus we are and remain eternally separated
and opposed to one another. They feel well enough that when
the Mass falls, the Papacy lies in ruins. Before they will
permit this to occur, they will put us all to death if they
can.
In addition to all this, this dragon's tail, [I mean] the
Mass, has begotten a numerous vermin-brood of manifold
idolatries.
First, purgatory. Here they carried their trade into purgatory
by masses for souls, and vigils, and weekly, monthly, and
yearly celebrations of obsequies, and finally by the Common
|
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 To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: suddenly to shed all superfluities, to shrink and diminish so that he
looked barer and felt sparer, even physically, yet lost none of his
intensity of mind, and so to stand on his little ledge facing the dark of
human ignorance, how we know nothing and the sea eats away the ground we
stand on--that was his fate, his gift. But having thrown away, when he
dismounted, all gestures and fripperies, all trophies of nuts and roses,
and shrunk so that not only fame kept even in that desolation a vigilance
which spared no phantom and luxuriated in no vision, and it was in this
guise that he inspired in William Bankes (intermittently) and in Charles
Tansley (obsequiously)and in his wife now, when she looked up and saw him
standing at the edge of the lawn, profoundly, reverence, and pity, and
To the Lighthouse |
