| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: had awakened again in his breast. One day, as he sat alone weeping, it
chanced that Wisdom met him. He told the old man what he had done.
"And Wisdom smiled sadly.
"'Many men,' he said, 'have spread that net for Truth; but they have never
found her. On the grains of credulity she will not feed; in the net of
wishes her feet cannot be held; in the air of these valleys she will not
breathe. The birds you have caught are of the brood of Lies. Lovely and
beautiful, but still lies; Truth knows them not.'
"And the hunter cried out in bitterness--
"'And must I then sit still, to be devoured of this great burning?'
"And the old man said,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: a woman from being wretched, though it may not make her happy.
The magnitude of a sacrifice ought always to bear some proportion
to the utility in view; and for a woman to live with a man, for
whom she can cherish neither affection nor esteem, or even be of
any use to him, excepting in the light of a house-keeper, is an
abjectness of condition, the enduring of which no concurrence of
circumstances can ever make a duty in the sight of God or just men.
If indeed she submits to it merely to be maintained in idleness,
she has no right to complain bitterly of her fate; or to act,
as a person of independent character might, as if she had
a title to disregard general rules.
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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 Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson: horse, and it rusty?"
"In my thought," said the man, "one thing is as good as another in
this world and a shoe of a horse will do."
"This can never be," thought the Earl; and he stood and looked upon
the man, and bit his beard.
And the man looked up at him and smiled. "It was so my fathers did
in the ancient ages," quoth he to the Earl, "and I have neither a
better reason nor a worse."
"There is no sense in any of this," thought the Earl, "and I must
be growing old." So he had his daughter on one side, and says he:
"Many suitors have you denied, my child. But here is a very
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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 Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: miserable, such a creature must be."
I freely confess, that all the little knowledge I have of any
value, was acquired by the lectures I received from my master,
and from hearing the discourses of him and his friends; to which
I should be prouder to listen, than to dictate to the greatest
and wisest assembly in Europe. I admired the strength,
comeliness, and speed of the inhabitants; and such a
constellation of virtues, in such amiable persons, produced in me
the highest veneration. At first, indeed, I did not feel that
natural awe, which the YAHOOS and all other animals bear toward
them; but it grew upon me by decrees, much sooner than I
Gulliver's Travels |
