| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Heritage of the Desert by Zane Grey: The afternoon grew apace; the sun glistened on the white patches of
Coconina Mountain; it set; and the wind died.
"Five miles of red sand," said Naab." Here's what kills the horses.
Getup."
There was no trail. All before was red sand, hollows, slopes, levels,
dunes, in which the horses sank above their fetlocks. The wheels
ploughed deep, and little red streams trailed down from the tires. Naab
trudged on foot with the reins in his hands. Hare essayed to walk also,
soon tired, and floundered behind till Naab ordered him to ride again.
Twilight came with the horses still toiling.
"There! thankful I am when we get off that strip! But, Jack, that
The Heritage of the Desert |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot: beside It."
"What," said I, "does the puny creature mean by 'it'?"
"He means himself," said the Sphere: "have you not noticed
before now, that babies and babyish people who cannot distinguish
themselves from the world, speak of themselves in the Third Person?
But hush!"
"It fills all Space," continued the little soliloquizing Creature,
"and what It fills, It is. What It thinks, that It utters;
and what It utters, that It hears; and It itself is Thinker, Utterer,
Hearer, Thought, Word, Audition; it is the One, and yet
the All in All. Ah, the happiness ah, the happiness of Being!"
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: rejecting in turn, from its own ranks, each of its own children who
fell below some lofty standard, and showed by weakliness, dulness,
or baseness, incapacity for the post of guiding and elevating their
fellow-citizens. Thus would arise a true aristocracy; a governing
body of the really most worthy--the most highly organised in body
and in mind--perpetually recruited from below: from which, or from
any other ideal, we are yet a few thousand years distant.
But the old Ancien Regime would have shuddered, did shudder, at such
a notion. The supreme class was to keep itself pure, and avoid all
taint of darker blood, shutting its eyes to the fact that some of
its most famous heroes had been born of such left-handed marriages
|
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 Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: Dindorf, n. ad loc., and Schneider. {sumbolon} = {eranos} or club
meal. Perhaps we ought to read {ekhontas} instead of {ekhonta}.
[11] See Plut. "Lycurg." 17 (Clough, i. 108).
[12] Lit. "condiments," such as "meat," "fish," etc. See "Cyrop." I.
ii. 8.
[13] Or, "and in general they would live more healthily and increase
in stature."
[14] See L. Dindorf's emendation of this corrupt passage, n. ad loc.
(based upon Plut. "Lycurg." 17 and Ps. Plut. "Moral." 237), {kai
eis mekos d' an auxanesthai oeto kai eueidesterous} vel {kallious
gignesthai, pros amphotera ton radina ta somata poiousan trophen
|
