| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: thought that is universal--in one word, to live no more my own
life, but let my consciousness be possessed and suffused by the
Infinite and Eternal life of spirit. And yet it is just in this
renunciation of self that I truly gain myself, or realize the
highest possibilities of my own nature. For whilst in one sense
we give up self to live the universal and absolute life of
reason, yet that to which we thus surrender ourselves is in
reality our truer self. The life of absolute reason is not a
life that is foreign to us."
Nevertheless, Principal Caird goes on to say, so far as we are
able outwardly to realize this doctrine, the balm it offers
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: The constitution, the national assembly, the dynastic parties, the blue
and the red republicans, the heroes from Africa, the thunder from the
tribune, the flash-lightnings from the daily press, the whole
literature, the political names and the intellectual celebrities, the
civil and the criminal law, the "liberte', egalite', fraternite',"
together with the 2d of May 1852--all vanished like a phantasmagoria
before the ban of one man, whom his enemies themselves do not pronounce
an adept at witchcraft. Universal suffrage seems to have survived only
for a moment, to the end that, before the eyes of the whole world, it
should make its own testament with its own hands, and, in the name of
the people, declare: "All that exists deserves to perish."
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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 Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: unconscious, simple as a child, lived out the law of his nature,
and set the world at defiance,--Bysshe Shelley.
The Doctor, talking to her father, watched the girl furtively,
took in every point, as one might critically survey a Damascus
blade which he was going to carry into battle. There was neither
love nor scorn in his look,--a mere fixedness of purpose to make
use of her some day. He talked, meanwhile, glancing at her now
and then, as if the subject they discussed were indirectly linked
with his plan for her. If it were, she was unconscious of it.
She sat on the wooden step of the porch, looking out on the
melancholy sweep of meadow and hill range growing cool and dimmer
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
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 Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: to leave his apartment, and he went at once to the door of the strong-
room. He was not a little astonished to see, as he went along, the
marks of a large foot along the stairways and corridors of the house.
Carefully avoiding those precious footprints, he followed them to the
door of the treasure-room, which he found locked without a sign of
fracture or defacement. Then he studied the direction of the steps;
but as they grew gradually fainter, they finally left not the
slightest trace, and it was impossible for him to discover where the
robber had fled.
"Ho, crony!" called out the king, "you have been finely robbed this
time."
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