| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: shown herself, up till yesterday at least, grasping and unscrupulous. She
is no worse than the others probably--possibly even better--but it would
be doing our country an ill turn to persuade its citizens that England
was anything less than an active, dangerous, competitor, especially in
the infancy of our foreign trade. When a business rival gives you the
glad hand and asks fondly after the children, beware lest the ensuing
emotions cost you money.
"No: our distrust for England has not its life and being in pernicious
textbooks. To really believe that would be an insult to our intelligence--
even grudges cannot live without real food. Should England become
helpless tomorrow, our animosity and distrust would die to-morrow,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: lying on the shore, which the Cilicians carried so far, but had not
time to carry aboard. It was one of the masterpieces of Sthenis.
And one told him, that it was the statue of Autolycus, the founder
of the city. This Autolycus is reported to have been son to
Deimachus, and one of those who, under Hercules, went on the
expedition out of Thessaly against the Amazons; from whence in his
return with Demoleon and Phlogius, he lost his vessel on a point of
the Chersonesus, called Pedalium. He himself, with his companions
and their weapons, being saved, came to Sinope, and dispossessed
the Syrians there. The Syrians held it, descended from Syrus, as
is the story, the son of Apollo, and Sinope the daughter of Asopus.
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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 Human Drift by Jack London: individuals is as nothing in comparison with the inconceivable
vastness of numbers of the micro-organisms. In your body, or in
mine, right now, are swarming more individual entities than there
are human beings in the world to-day. It is to us an invisible
world. We only guess its nearest confines. With our powerful
microscopes and ultramicroscopes, enlarging diameters twenty
thousand times, we catch but the slightest glimpses of that
profundity of infinitesimal life.
Little is known of that world, save in a general way. We know
that out of it arise diseases, new to us, that afflict and destroy
man. We do not know whether these diseases are merely the drifts,
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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 The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: peninsula of Tres Montes, this fifth here, and the next, I
trust in Providence, will be in England. We attended divine
service in the chapel of Pahia; part of the service being
read in English, and part in the native language. Whilst at
New Zealand we did not hear of any recent acts of cannibalism;
but Mr. Stokes found burnt human bones strewed
round a fire-place on a small island near the anchorage; but
these remains of a comfortable banquet might have been
lying there for several years. It is probable that the moral
state of the people will rapidly improve. Mr. Bushby mentioned
one pleasing anecdote as a proof of the sincerity of
The Voyage of the Beagle |
