| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: praise God's Name, to confess His grace, to give all honor to Him
alone. Then follows the third, to worship by praying, hearing
God's Word, thinking of and considering God's benefits, and in
addition chastising one's self, and keeping the body under.
But when the evil spirit perceives such faith, such honoring of
God and such worship, he rages and stirs up persecution, attacks
body, goods, honor and life, brings upon us sickness, poverty,
shame and death, which God so permits and ordains. See, here
begins the second work, or the second rest of the Third
Commandment; by this faith is very greatly tried, even as gold
in the fire. For it is a great thing to retain a sure confidence
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: these new discoveries .... I say the Ten Commandments were made
for man, and not man for the Commandments; and there ain't a
word against divorce in 'em, anyhow! That's what I tell my poor
old mother, who builds everything on her Bible. Find me the
place where it says: 'Thou shalt not sue for divorce.' It
makes her wild, poor old lady, because she can't; and she
doesn't know how they happen to have left it out.... I rather
think Moses left it out because he knew more about human nature
than these snivelling modern parsons do. Not that they'll
always bear investigating either; but I don't care about that.
Live and let live, eh, Susy? Haven't we all got a right to our
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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 The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: what principle the law is based, so it be a law. It may be
pure convention; it may have no inherent beauty; all that we
have a right to ask of any prosody is, that it shall lay down
a pattern for the writer, and that what it lays down shall be
neither too easy nor too hard. Hence it comes that it is
much easier for men of equal facility to write fairly
pleasing verse than reasonably interesting prose; for in
prose the pattern itself has to be invented, and the
difficulties first created before they can be solved. Hence,
again, there follows the peculiar greatness of the true
versifier: such as Shakespeare, Milton, and Victor Hugo,
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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 Youth by Joseph Conrad: was disheartening. This combustion refused to be stifled.
"We resolved to try water, and took the hatches off.
Enormous volumes of smoke, whitish, yellowish, thick,
greasy, misty, choking, ascended as high as the trucks.
All hands cleared out aft. Then the poisonous cloud
blew away, and we went back to work in a smoke that
was no thicker now than that of an ordinary factory
chimney.
"We rigged the force pump, got the hose along, and
by-and-by it burst. Well, it was as old as the ship--a
prehistoric hose, and past repair. Then we pumped with
Youth |
