| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: into abysmal heights, as it became a mere dreary system of dead
scientific terms, having no practical bearing on their hearts and lives;
and then they, as the Neoplatonists had done before them, filled up the
void by those daemonologies, images, base Fetish worships, which made
the Mohammedan invaders regard them, and I believe justly, as
polytheists and idolaters, base as the pagan Arabs of the desert.
I cannot but believe them, moreover, to have been untrue to the teaching
of Clement and his school, in that coarse and materialist admiration of
celibacy which ruined Alexandrian society, as their dogmatic ferocity
ruined Alexandrian thought. The Creed which taught them that in the
person of the Incarnate Logos, that which was most divine had been
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Royalty Restored/London Under Charles II by J. Fitzgerald Molloy: of encounter. Aware of this, the miscreants who had carried off
the duke discharged their pistols at him, and leaving him, as
they supposed, for dead, fled to avoid capture, and were seen or
heard of no more. His grace was carried in an insensible
condition to a neighbouring house, but not having received
serious hurt, recovered in a few days. The court and town were
strangely alarmed by this outrage; nor as time passed was there
any clue obtained to its perpetrators, though the king offered a
thousand pounds reward for their discovery.
The duke and his family, however, had little doubt his grace of
Buckingham was instigator of the deed; and Lord Ossory was
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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 Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: "has the honour of serving been accorded me?"
She hesitated a moment before speaking. Then she asked:
"You are no thern. Are you an enemy of the therns?"
"I have been in the territory of the therns for a day and a half.
During that entire time my life has been in constant danger.
I have been harassed and persecuted. Armed men and fierce beasts
have been set upon me. I had no quarrel with the therns before,
but can you wonder that I feel no great love for them now?
I have spoken."
She looked at me intently for several minutes before she replied.
It was as though she were attempting to read my inmost soul,
The Gods of Mars |
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 A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: physical our right to liberty involves the right to run them. A man
who is not free to risk his neck as an aviator or his soul as a
heretic is not free at all; and the right to liberty begins, not at
the age of 21 years but of 21 seconds.
The Risks of Ignorance and Weakness
The difficulty with children is that they need protection from risks
they are too young to understand, and attacks they can neither avoid
nor resist. You may on academic grounds allow a child to snatch
glowing coals from the fire once. You will not do it twice. The
risks of liberty we must let everyone take; but the risks of ignorance
and self-helplessness are another matter. Not only children but
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