| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: margin left. Since it was in Time that he was to have met his
fate, so it was in Time that his fate was to have acted; and as he
waked up to the sense of no longer being young, which was exactly
the sense of being stale, just as that, in turn, was the sense of
being weak, he waked up to another matter beside. It all hung
together; they were subject, he and the great vagueness, to an
equal and indivisible law. When the possibilities themselves had
accordingly turned stale, when the secret of the gods had grown
faint, had perhaps even quite evaporated, that, and that only, was
failure. It wouldn't have been failure to be bankrupt,
dishonoured, pilloried, hanged; it was failure not to be anything.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: by no brute natural necessity, but by their own unfaithfulness to that
which they knew, to that which they ought to have known? It is always
more hopeful, always, as I think, more philosophic, to throw the blame
of failure on man, on our own selves, rather than on God, and the
perfect law of His universe. At least let us be sure for ourselves,
that such an old age as befell this Greek society, as befalls many a man
nowadays, need not be our lot. Let us be sure that earth shows no
fairer sight than the old man, whose worn-out brain and nerves make it
painful, and perhaps impossible, to produce fresh thought himself: but
who can yet welcome smilingly and joyfully the fresh thoughts of others;
who keeps unwearied his faith in God's government of the universe, in
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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 Peter Pan by James M. Barrie: where it had been before, and said nicely that she would wear his
kiss on the chain around her neck. It was lucky that she did put
it on that chain, for it was afterwards to save her life.
When people in our set are introduced, it is customary for them
to ask each other's age, and so Wendy, who always liked to do the
correct thing, asked Peter how old he was. It was not really a
happy question to ask him; it was like an examination paper that
asks grammar, when what you want to be asked is Kings of England.
"I don't know," he replied uneasily, "but I am quite young."
He really knew nothing about it, he had merely suspicions, but he
said at a venture, "Wendy, I ran away the day I was born."
Peter Pan |
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 Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: whole orchestra in itself. It can express anything in response
to a skilled touch. Surely it is in some sort a pedestal on
which the soul poises for a flight forth into space, essaying on
her course to draw picture after picture in an endless series, to
paint human life, to cross the Infinite that separates heaven
from earth? And the longer a dreamer listens to those giant
harmonies, the better he realises that nothing save this
hundred-voiced choir on earth can fill all the space between
kneeling men, and a God hidden by the blinding light of the
Sanctuary. The music is the one interpreter strong enough to
bear up the prayers of humanity to heaven, prayer in its
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