The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: upon those very amphitheatres the stains of the fires with which
Charles Martel smoked them out; and one may see, too, or fancy that
one sees, in the aquiline features, the bright black eyes, the lithe
and graceful gestures, which are so common in Languedoc, some touch
of the old Mahommedan race, which passed like a flood over that
Christian land.
Whether or not the Moors left behind any traces of their blood, they
left behind, at least, traces of their learning; for the university
of Montpellier claimed to have been founded by Moors at a date of
altogether abysmal antiquity. They looked upon the Arabian
physicians of the Middle Age, on Avicenna and Averrhoes, as modern
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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 The First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells: lent me a razor too, but I could not screw up my resolution to attack even
the outposts of the bristling beard that covered my face.
I sat down to an English breakfast and ate with a sort of languid appetite
- an appetite many weeks old and very decrepit - and stirred myself to
answer the questions of the four young men. And I told them the truth.
"Well," said I, "as you press me - I got it in the moon."
"The moon?"
"Yes, the moon in the sky."
"But how do you mean?"
"What I say, confound it!"
"Then you have just come from the moon?"
 The First Men In The Moon |