The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne: I was haunted by uncomfortable suspicions, and at night
I slept badly, and between my broken dreams I fancied I
heard distant sighs like the notes of a funeral psalm.
Were they the prayers of the dead, murmured in that language
that I could not understand?
The next morning I went on to the bridge. Captain Nemo was there before me.
As soon as he perceived me he came to me.
"Professor, will it be convenient to you to make a submarine excursion to-day?"
"With my companions?" I asked.
"If they like."
"We obey your orders, Captain."
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea |
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 Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: loses itself in the sea.
Polybius is the last scientific historian of Greece. The writer
who seems fittingly to complete the progress of thought is a writer
of biographies only. I will not here touch on Plutarch's
employment of the inductive method as shown in his constant use of
inscription and statue, of public document and building and the
like, because it involves no new method. It is his attitude
towards miracles of which I desire to treat.
Plutarch is philosophic enough to see that in the sense of a
violation of the laws of nature a miracle is impossible. It is
absurd, he says, to imagine that the statue of a saint can speak,
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