| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: procured a church to be built of hewn stone, roofed and wainscoted
with cedar, which is the most considerable in the whole country. My
continual employment was the duties of the mission, which I was
always practising in some part of the province, not indeed with any
extraordinary success at first, for I found the people inflexibly
obstinate in their opinions, even to so great a degree, that when I
first published the Emperor's edict requiring all his subjects to
renounce their errors, and unite themselves to the Roman Church,
there were some monks who, to the number of sixty, chose rather to
die by throwing themselves headlong from a precipice than obey their
sovereign's commands: and in a battle fought between these people
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: would be more than a match for him. He is quite sincere in his prosecution
of his father, who has accidentally been guilty of homicide, and is not
wholly free from blame. To purge away the crime appears to him in the
light of a duty, whoever may be the criminal.
Thus begins the contrast between the religion of the letter, or of the
narrow and unenlightened conscience, and the higher notion of religion
which Socrates vainly endeavours to elicit from him. 'Piety is doing as I
do' is the idea of religion which first occurs to him, and to many others
who do not say what they think with equal frankness. For men are not
easily persuaded that any other religion is better than their own; or that
other nations, e.g. the Greeks in the time of Socrates, were equally
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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 Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs: thing for whom he had once intended her.
Like a tigress the girl turned upon the two white men.
"You are murderers," she cried. "Cowardly murderers.
Weak and exhausted by fever he could not combat you,
and so you have robbed the world of one of the noblest
men that God ever created."
"Hush!" cried Professor Maxon. "Hush, child, you do
not know what you say. The thing was a monster--
a soulless monster."
At the words the girl looked up quickly at her father,
a faint realization of his meaning striking her like a
The Monster Men |
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 My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: threatened enactment of a law compelling railroad companies to
respect the rights of travelers. Hon. Charles Francis Adams
performed signal service in the Massachusetts legislature, in
bringing this reformation; and to him the colored citizens of
that state are deeply indebted.
Although often annoyed, and sometimes outraged, by this prejudice
against color, I am indebted to it for many passages of quiet
amusement. A half-cured subject of it is sometimes driven into
awkward straits, especially if he happens to get a genuine
specimen of the race into his house.
<311 AMUSING SCENE>
My Bondage and My Freedom |
