The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: representative of unhampered freedom in ideal directions. The
laborer who pays with his person day by day, and has no rights
invested in the future, offers also much of this ideal
detachment. Like the savage, he may make his bed wherever his
right arm can support him, and from his simple and athletic
attitude of observation, the property-owner seems buried and
smothered in ignoble externalities and trammels, "wading in straw
and rubbish to his knees." The claims which THINGS make are
corrupters of manhood, mortgages on the soul, and a drag anchor
on our progress towards the empyrean.
"Everything I meet with," writes Whitefield, "seems to carry this
|
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 Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare: the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lyingest knave in
Christendom. What! I am not bestraught. Here's--
THIRD SERVANT.
O! this it is that makes your lady mourn.
SECOND SERVANT.
O! this is it that makes your servants droop.
LORD.
Hence comes it that your kindred shuns your house,
As beaten hence by your strange lunacy.
O noble lord, bethink thee of thy birth,
Call home thy ancient thoughts from banishment,
 The Taming of the Shrew |