| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Koran: send the rain upon you in torrents, and will extend to you wealth
and children, and will make for you gardens, and will make for you
rivers. What ails you that ye hope not for something serious from God,
when He has created you by steps? Do ye not see how God has created
the seven heavens in stories, and has set the moon therein for a
light, and set the sun for a lamp? and God has made you grow out of
the earth, and then He will make you return thereto, and will make you
come forth therefrom; and God has made for you the earth a carpet that
ye may walk therein in broad paths."'
Said Noah, 'My Lord! verily, they have rebelled against me, and
followed him whose wealth and children have but added to his loss, and
The Koran |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri: therefore require in the judge certain scientific
knowledge, and not merely the intuition of common sense.
But as the consultation of the jury, by reason of its inseparable
political aspect, must take place in private, we can only insist
on the fundamental reform of the judicial organisation, which
alone can realise the scientific principle of criminal
adjudication. It was Garofalo who, in the earlier days of the
positive school, urged that civil and criminal judges ought to be
wholly distinct, and that the latter ought to be versed in
anthropology, statistics, and criminal sociology, rather than in
Roman law, legal history, and the like, which throw no light on
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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 Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: But it is not only the person himself who suffers from
his busy habits, but his wife and children, his friends and
relations, and down to the very people he sits with in a
railway carriage or an omnibus. Perpetual devotion to what a
man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual
neglect of many other things. And it is not by any means
certain that a man's business is the most important thing he
has to do. To an impartial estimate it will seem clear that
many of the wisest, most virtuous, and most beneficent parts
that are to be played upon the Theatre of Life are filled by
gratuitous performers, and pass, among the world at large, as
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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 Flower Fables by Louisa May Alcott: passed away, while in silent wonder looked the Frost-King and
the Elves upon the scene before them.
Far as eye could reach were tall green trees whose drooping boughs
made graceful arches, through which the golden light shone softly,
making bright shadows on the deep green moss below, where the fairest
flowers waved in the cool wind, and sang, in their low, sweet voices,
how beautiful is Love.
Flowering vines folded their soft leaves around the trees,
making green pillars of their rough trunks. Fountains threw their
bright waters to the roof, and flocks of silver-winged birds flew
singing among the flowers, or brooded lovingly above their nests.
Flower Fables |
