| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: hour of trial, or in trusting that the children of
Zion would be one day called in with the fulness
of the Gentiles. In the meanwhile, all around her
showed that their present state was that of punishment
and probation, and that it was their especial
duty to suffer without sinning. Thus prepared to
consider herself as the victim of misfortune, Rebecca
had early reflected upon her own state, and
schooled her mind to meet the dangers which she
had probably to encounter.
The prisoner trembled, however, and changed
Ivanhoe |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: 'Do you threaten me, friend Otto?' asked the Doctor grimly. 'That
would be a strange conclusion.'
'When have you ever known me use my power in any private animosity?'
cried Otto. 'To any private man your words were an unpardonable
insult, but at me you shoot in full security, and I must turn aside
to compliment you on your plainness. I must do more than pardon, I
must admire, because you have faced this - this formidable monarch,
like a Nathan before David. You have uprooted an old kindness, sir,
with an unsparing hand. You leave me very bare. My last bond is
broken; and though I take Heaven to witness that I sought to do the
right, I have this reward: to find myself alone. You say I am no
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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 Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence: have it. You'll see, they'll hound that man down. And what's he done,
after all? If he's made love to his wife all ends on, hasn't he a right
to? She ought to be proud of it. But you see, even a low bitch like
that turns on him, and uses the hyena instinct of the mob against sex,
to pull him down. You have a snivel and feel sinful or awful about your
sex, before you're allowed to have any. Oh, they'll hound the poor
devil down.'
Connie had a revulsion in the opposite direction now. What had he done,
after all? what had he done to herself, Connie, but give her an
exquisite pleasure and a sense of freedom and life? He had released her
warm, natural sexual flow. And for that they would hound him down.
Lady Chatterley's Lover |
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: certain faults which seemed to them, in the case of the French
Church, ineradicable and inexpiable? Till then we must have
charity--which is justice--even for the philosophes of the
eighteenth century.
This view of the case had been surely overlooked by M. de
Tocqueville, when he tried to explain by the fear of revolutions,
the fact that both in America and in England, "while the boldest
political doctrines of the eighteenth-century philosophers have been
adopted, their anti-religious doctrines have made no way."
He confesses that, "Among the English, French irreligious philosophy
had been preached, even before the greater part of the French
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