| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Heroes by Charles Kingsley: among the wonders of the world; and many another wondrous
thing God taught them, for which we are the wiser this day.
For you must not fancy, children, that because these old
Greeks were heathens, therefore God did not care for them,
and taught them nothing.
The Bible tells us that it was not so, but that God's mercy
is over all His works, and that He understands the hearts of
all people, and fashions all their works. And St. Paul told
these old Greeks in after times, when they had grown wicked
and fallen low, that they ought to have known better, because
they were God's offspring, as their own poets had said; and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tao Teh King by Lao-tze: their bones.
3. He constantly (tries to) keep them without knowledge and without
desire, and where there are those who have knowledge, to keep them
from presuming to act (on it). When there is this abstinence from
action, good order is universal.
4. 1. The Tao is (like) the emptiness of a vessel; and in our
employment of it we must be on our guard against all fulness. How
deep and unfathomable it is, as if it were the Honoured Ancestor of
all things!
2. We should blunt our sharp points, and unravel the complications of
things; we should attemper our brightness, and bring ourselves into
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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 Land of Footprints by Stewart Edward White: old man got up and made quite a long speech. When he had finished
another did likewise. All was carried out with the greatest
decorum. After four or five had thus spoken, Horne, without
altering his lounging attitude, spoke twenty or thirty words,
rapped again on the table with his rawhide whip, and immediately
came over to us.
"Now," said he cheerfully, "we'll have a game of golf."
That was amusing, but not astonishing. Most of us have at one
time or another laid out a scratch hole or so somewhere in the
vacant lot. We returned to the house, Horne produced a
sufficiency of clubs, and we sallied forth. Then came the surprise
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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 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: pamphlets to begin with, he cut the volumes into pieces as well as he could,
and with a three-pronged fork shook them over the flames. They kindled,
and lighted up the back of the house, the pigsty, and his own face, till they
were more or less consumed.
Though he was almost a stranger here now, passing cottagers
talked to him over the garden hedge.
"Burning up your awld aunt's rubbidge, I suppose? Ay; a lot gets heaped up
in nooks and corners when you've lived eighty years in one house."
It was nearly one o'clock in the morning before the leaves, covers,
and binding of Jeremy Taylor, Butler, Doddridge, Paley, Pusey, Newman and
the rest had gone to ashes, but the night was quiet, and as he turned
Jude the Obscure |
