| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: 354.
[7] See Paus. VII. i. 8, the {phidition} or {philition}; "Hell." V.
iv. 28.
IV
But if he was thus careful in the education of the stripling,[1] the
Spartan lawgiver showed a still greater anxiety in dealing with those
who had reached the prime of opening manhood; considering their
immense importance to the city in the scale of good, if only they
proved themselves the men they should be. He had only to look around
to see what wherever the spirit of emulation[2] is most deeply seated,
there, too, their choruses and gymnastic contests will present alike a
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer: the matter from the press that, whilst public interest was much engaged
with some of the events in the skein of mystery which he had come from
Burma to unravel, outside the Secret Service and the special department
of Scotland Yard few people recognized that the several murders,
robberies and disappearances formed each a link in a chain; fewer still
were aware that a baneful presence was in our midst, that a past
master of the evil arts lay concealed somewhere in the metropolis;
searched for by the keenest wits which the authorities could direct
to the task, but eluding all-triumphant, contemptuous.
One link in that chain Smith himself for long failed to recognize.
Yet it was a big and important link.
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: rescuing (as it seems to you) one more thought of the Divine mind
from Hela, and the realms of the unknown, unclassified,
uncomprehended? As it seems to you: though in reality it only
seems so, in a world wherein not a sparrow falls to the ground
unnoticed by our Father who is in heaven.
The truth is, the pleasure of finding new species is too great; it
is morally dangerous; for it brings with it the temptation to look
on the thing found as your own possession, all but your own
creation; to pride yourself on it, as if God had not known it for
ages since; even to squabble jealously for the right of having it
named after you, and of being recorded in the Transactions of I-
|
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 The Jolly Corner by Henry James: the small house in Irving Place to which she had subtly managed to
cling through her almost unbroken New York career. If he knew the
way to it now better than to any other address among the dreadful
multiplied numberings which seemed to him to reduce the whole place
to some vast ledger-page, overgrown, fantastic, of ruled and criss-
crossed lines and figures - if he had formed, for his consolation,
that habit, it was really not a little because of the charm of his
having encountered and recognised, in the vast wilderness of the
wholesale, breaking through the mere gross generalisation of wealth
and force and success, a small still scene where items and shades,
all delicate things, kept the sharpness of the notes of a high
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