| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: Pigeons and clouds and sun and whirling shadows,
And stars that brightening climb through mist at nightfall,--
In some deep way I am aware these praise me:
Where they are beautiful, or hint of beauty,
They point, somehow, to me. . . .This water says,--
Shimmering at the sky, or undulating
In broken gleaming parodies of clouds,
Rippled in blue, or sending from cool depths
To meet the falling leaf the leaf's clear image,--
This water says, there is some secret in you
Akin to my clear beauty, silently responsive
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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: syllogistic symbols of crime and punishment--if we further add the
easy-going idea of the multitude, that the inscribing of a law in
the statute-book is a sufficient remedy for social diseases, we
can readily understand how this exaggerated and illusory
confidence in punishment is so persistent, and crops up in every
theoretical or practical discussion, in spite of the strong
refutation which is daily afforded by facts and psychological
observation.
All human actions, like the actions of animals, are developed
between the two opposite poles of pleasure and pain, by the
attraction of the former and the repulsion of the latter. And
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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 A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: fires. By night they buried their beloved in the cemetery of Pere-
Lachaise; Horace Bianchon, undaunted by the difficulties, cleared them
away one after another--it was he indeed who besought the authorities
for permission to bury the fallen insurgent and confessed to his old
friendship with the dead Federalist. The little group of friends
present at the funeral with those five great men will never forget
that touching scene.
As you walk in the trim cemetery you will see a grave purchased in
perpetuity, a grass-covered mound with a dark wooden cross above it,
and the name in large red letters--MICHEL CHRESTIEN. There is no other
monument like it. The friends thought to pay a tribute to the sternly
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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 Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: dozen black pirates dashing toward us from the melee. We
had been discovered. With shrieks of rage the demons
sprang for us. With frenzied insistence I continued to press
the little button which should have sent us racing out into
space, but still the vessel refused to budge. Then it came to
me--the reason that she would not rise.
We had stumbled upon a two-man flier. Its ray tanks
were charged only with sufficient repulsive energy to lift
two ordinary men. The Thark's great weight was anchoring
us to our doom.
The blacks were nearly upon us. There was not an instant
The Gods of Mars |
