| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: These heroes fought with great renown;
By falling got the Martyr's crown. (5)
(1) Kirkton, p. 244.
(2) Kirkton.
(3) Turner.
(4) Kirkton.
(5) Kirkton.
THE PENTLAND RISING
CHAPTER V - A RECORD OF BLOOD
'They cut his hands ere he was dead,
And after that struck of his head.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber: the days when Theresa Platt was Terry Sheehan to get the real
significance of it, and of the things she did after she went.
When Mrs. Orville Platt had been Terry Sheehan, she had played
the piano, afternoons and evenings, in the orchestra of the Bijou
Theater, on Cass Street, Wetona, Wisconsin. Anyone with a name
like Terry Sheehan would, perforce, do well anything she might
set out to do. There was nothing of genius in Terry, but there
was something of fire, and much that was Irish. Which meant that
the Watson Team, Eccentric Song and Dance Artists, never needed a
rehearsal when they played the Bijou. Ruby Watson used merely to
approach Terry before the Monday performance, sheet music in
One Basket |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Art of War by Sun Tzu: and unsettle his mind by presenting him with lovely women."
Chang Yu (after Wang Hsi) makes a different interpretation of Sun
Tzu here: "Get the enemy into a position where he must suffer
injury, and he will submit of his own accord."]
and make trouble for them,
[Tu Mu, in this phrase, in his interpretation indicates that
trouble should be make for the enemy affecting their
"possessions," or, as we might say, "assets," which he considers
to be "a large army, a rich exchequer, harmony amongst the
soldiers, punctual fulfillment of commands." These give us a
whip-hand over the enemy.]
The Art of War |
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 Republic by Plato: follow are not mine.--Let me put them into the mouths of the eulogists of
injustice: They will tell you that the just man who is thought unjust will
be scourged, racked, bound--will have his eyes burnt out; and, at last,
after suffering every kind of evil, he will be impaled: Then he will
understand that he ought to seem only, and not to be, just; the words of
Aeschylus may be more truly spoken of the unjust than of the just. For the
unjust is pursuing a reality; he does not live with a view to appearances--
he wants to be really unjust and not to seem only:--
'His mind has a soil deep and fertile,
Out of which spring his prudent counsels.'
In the first place, he is thought just, and therefore bears rule in the
The Republic |
