| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: three or four of the others would be absent from camp,
exploring or hunting. The Swede racked his brain for some plan
whereby he might successfully lure from the sight of the
anchored ship those whom he had determined to abandon.
To this end he organized hunting party after hunting party,
but always the devil of perversity seemed to enter the soul of
Kai Shang, so that wily celestial would never hunt except
in the company of Gust himself.
One day Kai Shang spoke secretly with Momulla the Maori,
pouring into the brown ear of his companion the suspicions
which he harboured concerning the Swede. Momulla was for
The Beasts of Tarzan |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: He had bright eyes with a sparkle and a dance to them, curly hair, a
charming smile, brilliant teeth, an admirable carriage of the head, the
look of a gentleman, the address of one accustomed to please at first
sight and to improve the impression. And with all these advantages, he
failed with every one about Hermiston; with the silent shepherd, with
the obsequious grieve, with the groom who was also the ploughman, with
the gardener and the gardener's sister - a pious, down-hearted woman
with a shawl over her ears - he failed equally and flatly. They did not
like him, and they showed it. The little maid, indeed, was an
exception; she admired him devoutly, probably dreamed of him in her
private hours; but she was accustomed to play the part of silent auditor
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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 The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy: cruelty, or to appear before him in an ill-fitting dress, or a
dress of an unbecoming color. She will prefer the first
alternative. She knows very well that we simply lie when we talk
of our elevated sentiments, that we seek only the possession of
her body, and that because of that we will forgive her every sort
of baseness, but will not forgive her a costume of an ugly shade,
without taste or fit.
"And these things she knows by reason, where as the maiden knows
them only by instinct, like the animal. Hence these abominable
jerseys, these artificial humps on the back, these bare
shoulders, arms, and throats.
The Kreutzer Sonata |
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 Euthydemus by Plato: CRITO: What do you say of them, Socrates? There is certainly something
specious in that notion of theirs.
SOCRATES: Yes, Crito, there is more speciousness than truth; they cannot
be made to understand the nature of intermediates. For all persons or
things, which are intermediate between two other things, and participate in
both of them--if one of these two things is good and the other evil, are
better than the one and worse than the other; but if they are in a mean
between two good things which do not tend to the same end, they fall short
of either of their component elements in the attainment of their ends.
Only in the case when the two component elements which do not tend to the
same end are evil is the participant better than either. Now, if
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