| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy: month, week, and day that passed, Sergius felt his own inner life
wasting away and being replaced by external life. It was as if
he had been turned inside out.
Sergius saw that he was a means of attracting visitors and
contributions to the monastery, and that therefore the
authorities arranged matters in such a way as to make as much use
of him as possible. For instance, they rendered it impossible
for him to do any manual work. He was supplied with everything
he could want, and they only demanded of him that he should not
refuse his blessing to those who came to seek it. For his
convenience they appointed days when he would receive. They
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: wild--the mallard--thought, which 'mid falling dews wings its way
above the fens. A truly good book is something as natural, and as
unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild-flower
discovered on the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the
East. Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like
the lightning's flash, which perchance shatters the temple of
knowledge itself--and not a taper lighted at the hearthstone of
the race, which pales before the light of common day.
English literature, from the days of the minstrels to the Lake
Poets--Chaucer and Spenser and Milton, and even Shakespeare,
included--breathes no quite fresh and, in this sense, wild
Walking |
