| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: Something black and unfamiliar and ferocious spoke from Babbitt: "Now, you
look here, Charley! I'm damned if I'm going to be bullied into joining
anything, not even by you plutes!"
"We're not bullying anybody," Dr. Dilling began, but Colonel Snow thrust him
aside with, "Certainly we are! We don't mind a little bullying, if it's
necessary. Babbitt, the G.C.L. has been talking about you a good deal. You're
supposed to be a sensible, clean, responsible man; you always have been; but
here lately, for God knows what reason, I hear from all sorts of sources that
you're running around with a loose crowd, and what's a whole lot worse, you've
actually been advocating and supporting some of the most dangerous elements in
town, like this fellow Doane."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: of her having passed through mysterious ceremonies and processes of culture
in her youth, of her having been fashioned and made flexible to certain
exalted social needs. All this, as I have affirmed, made her seem
rare and precious--a very expensive article, as he would have said,
and one which a man with an ambition to have everything about him
of the best would find it highly agreeable to possess. But looking
at the matter with an eye to private felicity, Newman wondered where,
in so exquisite a compound, nature and art showed their dividing line.
Where did the special intention separate from the habit of good manners?
Where did urbanity end and sincerity begin? Newman asked himself
these questions even while he stood ready to accept the admired object
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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 Koran: in obscurity concerning the new creation.
But we created man, and we know what his soul whispers; for we are
nigher to him than his jugular vein!
When the two meeters meet, sitting the one on the right and the
other on the left, not a word does he utter, but a watcher is by him
ready!
And the agony of death shall come in truth!-'that is what thou didst
shun!'
And the trumpet shall be blown!-that is the threatened day!
And every soul shall come-with it a driver and a witness!
'Thou wert heedless of this, and we withdrew thy veil from thee, and
The Koran |
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 Apology by Xenophon: has a voice and is a very mighty omen;[22] and the priestess on her
tripod at Pytho,[23] does not she also proclaim by voice the messages
from the god? The god, at any rate, has foreknowledge, and premonishes
those whom he will of what is about to be. That is a thing which all
the world believes and asserts even as I do. Only, when they describe
these premonitions under the name of birds and utterances, tokens[24]
and soothsayers, I speak of a divinity, and in using that designation
I claim to speak at once more exactly and more reverentially than they
do who ascribe the power of the gods to birds. And that I am not lying
against the Godhead I have this as a proof: although I have reported
to numbers of friends the counsels of heaven, I have never at any time
The Apology |
