| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: ourselves as others see us, our surprise in the case of foreign
peoples might be less pronounced.
Regarding, then, the Far Oriental as a man, and not simply as a
phenomenon, we discover in his peculiar point of view a new
importance,--the possibility of using it stereoptically. For his
mind-photograph of the world can be placed side by side with ours,
and the two pictures combined will yield results beyond what either
alone could possibly have afforded. Thus harmonized, they will help
us to realize humanity. Indeed it is only by such a combination of
two different aspects that we ever perceive substance and distinguish
reality from illusion. What our two eyes make possible for material
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare: Else Paris, and the medicine, and the king,
Had from the conversation of my thoughts
Haply been absent then.
COUNTESS.
But think you, Helen,
If you should tender your supposed aid,
He would receive it? He and his physicians
Are of a mind; he, that they cannot help him;
They, that they cannot help: how shall they credit
A poor unlearned virgin, when the schools,
Embowell'd of their doctrine, have let off
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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 Tarzan the Untamed by Edgar Rice Burroughs: ever toward the west, crossing hideous gorges and marching
across the face of a burning land beneath the pitiless sun. The
poor slaves they had captured were, of course, compelled to
carry all the camp equipage and loot and thus heavily bur-
dened, half starved and without water, they soon commenced
to die like flies.
"We had not been in the desert land long before the Arabs
were forced to kill their horses for food, and when we reached
the first gorge, across which it would have been impossible
to transport the animals, the balance of them were slaughtered
and the meat loaded upon the poor staggering blacks who still
Tarzan the Untamed |
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 Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens: pavement of the road, and sometimes with the workmen's voices as
they called to one another. Whenever the chimes of the
neighbouring church were heard--and that was every quarter of an
hour--a strange sensation, instantaneous and indescribable, but
perfectly obvious, seemed to pervade them all.
Gradually, a faint brightness appeared in the east, and the air,
which had been very warm all through the night, felt cool and
chilly. Though there was no daylight yet, the darkness was
diminished, and the stars looked pale. The prison, which had been
a mere black mass with little shape or form, put on its usual
aspect; and ever and anon a solitary watchman could be seen upon
Barnaby Rudge |
