| 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: to think of Sin in the singular, and with a capital S, as of
something ineradicably ingrained in our natural subjectivity, and
never to be removed by any superficial piecemeal operations.[70]
These comparisons of races are always open to exception, but
undoubtedly the northern tone in religion has inclined to the
more intimately pessimistic persuasion, and this way of feeling,
being the more extreme, we shall find by far the more instructive
for our study.
[70] Cf. J. Milsand: Luther et le Serf-Arbitre, 1884, passim.
Recent psychology has found great use for the word "threshold" as
a symbolic designation for the point at which one state of mind
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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 Awakening & Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin: to return next day. He stayed all winter at the island; he lived
there, and kept the place in order and got things ready for the
summer visitors.
But a man needed occasional relaxation, he informed Mrs.
Pontellier, and every now and again he drummed up a pretext to
bring him to the city. My! but he had had a time of it the evening
before! He wouldn't want his mother to know, and he began to talk
in a whisper. He was scintillant with recollections. Of course,
he couldn't think of telling Mrs. Pontellier all about it, she
being a woman and not comprehending such things. But it all began
with a girl peeping and smiling at him through the shutters as he
Awakening & Selected Short Stories |
