| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Cavalry General by Xenophon: your business is to provide yourself with a supply of people friendly
to both states, or maybe merchants (since states are ready to receive
the importer of goods with open arms); sham deserters may be found
occasionally useful.[10] Not, of course, that the confidence you feel
in your spies must ever cause you to neglect outpost duty; indeed your
state of preparation should at any moment be precisely what it ought
to be, supposing the approach or the imminent arrival of the enemy
were to be announced. Let a spy be ever so faithful, there is always
the risk he may fail to report his intelligence at the critical
moment, since the obstacles which present themselves in war are not to
be counted on the fingers.
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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 Walden by Henry David Thoreau: weather-beaten than when I saw him last. I have heard of a dog that
barked at every stranger who approached his master's premises with
clothes on, but was easily quieted by a naked thief. It is an
interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if
they were divested of their clothes. Could you, in such a case,
tell surely of any company of civilized men which belonged to the
most respected class? When Madam Pfeiffer, in her adventurous
travels round the world, from east to west, had got so near home as
Asiatic Russia, she says that she felt the necessity of wearing
other than a travelling dress, when she went to meet the
authorities, for she "was now in a civilized country, where ...
Walden |
