| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: hopes rising in a towering wave only to break in foam on the shoal;
the wonders wrought in reconciling adverse interests which, after
working together for a week, fell asunder; the annoyance, a thousand
times repeated, of seeing a dunce decorated with the Legion of Honor,
and preferred, though as ignorant as a shop-boy, to a man of talent.
Then, what Marcas called the stratagems of stupidity--you strike a
man, and he seems convinced, he nods his head--everything is settled;
next day, this india-rubber ball, flattened for a moment, has
recovered itself in the course of the night; it is as full of wind as
ever; you must begin all over again; and you go on till you understand
that you are not dealing with a man, but with a lump of gum that loses
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: such that they have no disease, and live much longer than we do, and have
sight and hearing and smell, and all the other senses, in far greater
perfection, in the same proportion that air is purer than water or the
ether than air. Also they have temples and sacred places in which the gods
really dwell, and they hear their voices and receive their answers, and are
conscious of them and hold converse with them, and they see the sun, moon,
and stars as they truly are, and their other blessedness is of a piece with
this.
Such is the nature of the whole earth, and of the things which are around
the earth; and there are divers regions in the hollows on the face of the
globe everywhere, some of them deeper and more extended than that which we
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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 Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin: fundamental element--Shyness--Shame, from broken moral laws and
conventional rules--Modesty--Theory of blushing--Recapitulation 309-346
CHAP. XIV.--CONCLUDING REMARKS AND SUMMARY.
The three leading principles which have determined the chief movements
of expression--Their inheritance--On the part which the will and
intention have played in the acquirement of various expressions--
The instinctive recognition of expression--The bearing of our
subject on the specific unity of the races of man--On the successive
acquirement of various expressions by the progenitors of man--
The importance of expression--Conclusion 347-366
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals |
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 Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: those four brutes, and of the fate of my after-ox Kaptein. He was a
splendid ox, and I was very fond of him. So wroth was I that like a
fool I determined to attack the whole family of them. It was worthy of
a greenhorn out on his first hunting trip; but I did it nevertheless.
Accordingly after breakfast, having rubbed some oil upon my leg, which
was very sore from the cub's tongue, I took the driver, Tom, who did not
half like the business, and having armed myself with an ordinary double
No. 12 smoothbore, the first breechloader I ever had, I started. I took
the smoothbore because it shot a bullet very well; and my experience has
been that a round ball from a smoothbore is quite as effective against a
lion as an express bullet. The lion is soft, and not a difficult animal
Long Odds |
