| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from In Darkest England and The Way Out by General William Booth: Institution, no law of supply and demand actuates the volunteers who
risk their lives to bring the shipwrecked to shore.
What we have to do is to apply the same principle to society. We want
a Social Lifeboat Institution, a Social Lifeboat Brigade, to snatch
from the abyss those who, if left to themselves, will perish as
miserably as the crew of a ship that founders in mid-ocean.
The moment that we take in hand this work we shall be compelled to turn
our attention seriously to the question whether prevention is not
better than cure. It is easier and cheaper, and in every way better,
to prevent the loss of home than to have to re-create that home.
It is better to keep a man out of the mire than to let him fall in
In Darkest England and The Way Out |
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 Cavalry General by Xenophon: our "officer serre-file," to some extent. So Courier: "Celui qui
commande en serre-file. C'est chez nous le capitaine en second."
[8] Or, "the rest of the squadron." Lit. "his own tribesmen."
An even number of file-leaders will admit of a greater number of equal
subdivisions than an odd.
The above formation pleases me for two good reasons: in the first
place, all the front-rank men are forced to act as officers;[9] and
the same man, mark you, when in command is somehow apt to feel that
deeds of valour are incumbent on him which, as a private, he ignores;
and in the next place, at a crisis when something calls for action on
the instant, the word of command passed not to privates but to
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