| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: the attitude of a defender. He remained outside the theological
arena; looking at theological questions from the point of view of
a layman, or rather, as M. Cherbuliez has happily expressed it,
of a Pagan. His mind was of decidedly antique structure. He had
the virtues of paganism: its sanity, its calmness, and its
probity; but of the tenderness of Christianity, and its
quenchless aspirations after an indefinable ideal, of that
feeling which has incarnated itself in Gothic cathedrals, masses
and oratorios, he exhibited but scanty traces. His intellect was
above all things self-consistent and incorruptible. He had that
imperial good-sense which might have formed the ideal alike of
 The Unseen World and Other Essays |
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 Outlaw of Torn by Edgar Rice Burroughs: "It is the first command I have obeyed since I
turned sixteen, Bertrade de Montfort," he said.
The girl was about nineteen, full of the vigor and
gaiety of youth and health; and so the two rode on
their journey talking and laughing as they might have
been friends of long standing.
She told him of the reason for the attack upon her
earlier in the day, attributing it to an attempt on the
part of a certain baron, Peter of Colfax, to abduct her,
his suit for her hand having been peremptorily and
roughly denied by her father.
 The Outlaw of Torn |