| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Reign of King Edward the Third by William Shakespeare: Thy ransom, John, hereafter shall be known:
But first to England thou must cross the seas,
To see what entertainment it affords;
How ere it falls, it cannot be so bad,
As ours hath been since we arrived in France.
KING JOHN.
Accursed man! of this I was foretold,
But did misconster what the prophet told.
PRINCE EDWARD.
Now, father, this petition Edward makes
To thee, whose grace hath been his strongest shield,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: his friends, Turgénieff, Gay, Leskóf,¹
Zhemtchúzhnikof² and others! He inquired after the
smallest matters; no detail, however trifling in appearance, was
without its interest and importance to him.
¹A novelist, died 1895.
²One of the authors of "Junker Schmidt."
His "Circle of Reading," November 7, the day he died, is
devoted entirely to thoughts on death.
"Life is a dream, death is an awakening," he wrote, while in
expectation of that awakening.
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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 Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger: recognize the greater need of inborn health and character. ``If it
were necessary to choose between the task of getting children educated
and getting them well born and healthy,'' writes Havelock Ellis, ``it
would be better to abandon education. There have been many great
peoples who never dreamed of national systems of education; there have
been no great peoples without the art of producing healthy and
vigorous children. The matter becomes of peculiar importance in great
industrial states, like England, the United States and Germany,
because in such states, a tacit conspiracy tends to grow up to
subordinate national ends to individual ends, and practically to work
for the deterioration of the race.''[8]
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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 Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: but like God's judging angel, whose clear, sad eye saw all the
countless cankering days of this man's life, all the countless
nights, when, sick with starving, his soul fainted in him,
before it judged him for this night, the saddest of all.
I called this night the crisis of his life. If it was, it stole
on him unawares. These great turning-days of life cast no
shadow before, slip by unconsciously. Only a trifle, a little
turn of the rudder, and the ship goes to heaven or hell.
Wolfe, while Deborah watched him, dug into the furnace of
melting iron with his pole, dully thinking only how many rails
the lump would yield. It was late,--nearly Sunday morning;
Life in the Iron-Mills |
