| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: me to this. If I was deceived and my marriage is no marriage
before the law as they tell me now, I knew nothing of it, therefore
to me it is still valid and holy and on my soul there rests no
stain. At the least I have lived, and for some few hours I have
been wife and mother, and it is as well to die swiftly in this cell
that your mercy has prepared, as more slowly in those above. And
now for you--I tell you that your wickedness shall find you out,
you who dare to say to God's children--"Ye shall not love," and to
work murder on them because they will not listen. It shall find
you out I say, and not only you but the Church you serve. Both
priest and Church shall be broken together and shall be a scorn in
Montezuma's Daughter |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: Laws, especially when we remember that he was living at Athens, and a
frequenter of the groves of the Academy, during the last twenty years of
Plato's life. Nor must we forget that in all his numerous citations from
the Platonic writings he never attributes any passage found in the extant
dialogues to any one but Plato. And lastly, we may remark that one or two
great writings, such as the Parmenides and the Politicus, which are wholly
devoid of Aristotelian (1) credentials may be fairly attributed to Plato,
on the ground of (2) length, (3) excellence, and (4) accordance with the
general spirit of his writings. Indeed the greater part of the evidence
for the genuineness of ancient Greek authors may be summed up under two
heads only: (1) excellence; and (2) uniformity of tradition--a kind of
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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 Paz by Honore de Balzac: of my involuntary thoughts,--I would have died rather than avow it
until now.
"You will remember those few days of curiosity when you wished to
know the man who performed the household miracles you had
sometimes noticed. I thought,--forgive me, madame,--I believed you
might love me. Your good-will, your glances interpreted by me, a
lover, seemed to me so dangerous--for me--that I invented that
story of Malaga, knowing it was the sort of liaison which women
cannot forgive. I did it in a moment when I felt that my love
would be communicated, fatally, to you. Despise me, crush me with
the contempt you have so often cast upon me when I did not deserve
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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 Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: merits of the clergy. He had not much instruction; he could 'read
bills on the street,' but was 'main bad at writing'; yet these
theologians seem to have impressed him with a genuine sense of
amusement. Why he did not go to the Sailors' House I know not; I
presume there is in Glasgow one of these institutions, which are by
far the happiest and the wisest effort of contemporaneous charity;
but I must stand to my author, as they say in old books, and relate
the story as I heard it. In the meantime, he had tried four times to
stow away in different vessels, and four times had been discovered
and handed back to starvation. The fifth time was lucky; and you may
judge if he were pleased to be aboard ship again, at his old work,
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