| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs: her in the person of the bestial Malay pirate?
She had turned to take the first step toward freedom
when three figures emerged from the wall of darkness
behind her. She saw the war-caps, shields, and war-
coats, and her heart sank. Here were others of the
rajah's party--stragglers who had come just in time to
thwart her plans. How large these men were--she never
had seen a native of such giant proportions; and now
they had come quite close to her, and as the foremost
stooped to speak to her she shrank back in fear.
Then, to her surprise, she heard in whispered English;
The Monster Men |
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 Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: the recent discoveries of physical science--notably those of
embryology--go only to justify that old and general belief of man.
If man be told that the microscope and scalpel show no difference,
in the first stage of visible existence, between him and the lower
mammals, then he has a right to answer--as he will answer--So much
the worse for the microscope and scalpel: so much the better for my
old belief, that there is beneath my birth, life, death, a
substratum of supernatural causes, imponderable, invisible,
unknowable by any physical science whatsoever. If you cannot render
me a reason how I came hither, and what I am, I must go to those who
will render me one. And if that craving be not satisfied by a
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