| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: matters he was quite rational, so this, too, was
bound to come. Such was the barber's firm opin-
ion.
Nobody had ever contradicted him; his own hair
had gone grey since that time, and Captain Hag-
berd's beard had turned quite white, and had ac-
quired a majestic flow over the No. 1 canvas suit,
which he had made for himself secretly with tarred
twine, and had assumed suddenly, coming out in
it one fine morning, whereas the evening before he
had been seen going home in his mourning of
To-morrow |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: The history of their coming to, and conduct in, the island after my
going away is so very remarkable, and has so many incidents which
the former part of my relation will help to understand, and which
will in most of the particulars, refer to the account I have
already given, that I cannot but commit them, with great delight,
to the reading of those that come after me.
In order to do this as intelligibly as I can, I must go back to the
circumstances in which I left the island, and the persons on it, of
whom I am to speak. And first, it is necessary to repeat that I
had sent away Friday's father and the Spaniard (the two whose lives
I had rescued from the savages) in a large canoe to the main, as I
Robinson Crusoe |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: he delivers us, in order that we may know and feel the importance
of salvation, and be enabled to appreciate the value of what God
is pleased to do for us. As those who are saved are successively
in two extremely different states--first in a state of
condemnation and then in a state of justification and
blessedness--and as God, in the salvation of men, deals with them
as rational and intelligent creatures, it appears agreeable to
this wisdom, that those who are saved should be made sensible of
their Being, in those two different states. In the first place,
that they should be made sensible of their state of condemnation;
and afterwards, of their state of deliverance and happiness."
|
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 Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: depended on something different from either. My elders used to
read novels aloud; and I can still remember four different passages
which I heard, before I was ten, with the same keen and lasting
pleasure. One I discovered long afterwards to be the admirable
opening of WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT: it was no wonder I was pleased
with that. The other three still remain unidentified. One is a
little vague; it was about a dark, tall house at night, and people
groping on the stairs by the light that escaped from the open door
of a sickroom. In another, a lover left a ball, and went walking
in a cool, dewy park, whence he could watch the lighted windows and
the figures of the dancers as they moved. This was the most
|
