| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mountains by Stewart Edward White: wondrous brave children of the great mother, with
the world of living things.
After we had eaten, which was the very first thing
we did, we walked to the edge of the main crest and
looked over. That edge went straight down. I do
not know how far, except that even in contemplation
we entirely lost our breaths, before we had fallen half
way to the bottom. Then intervened a ledge, and in
the ledge was a round glacier lake of the very deepest
and richest ultramarine you can find among your
paint-tubes, and on the lake floated cakes of
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: is often very short, much shorter than ours. That is because they all
understand each other, are much closer knit than we are. Behind them are
generations of "doing it" in the same established way, a way that their
long experience of life has hammered out for their own convenience, and
which they like. We're not nearly so closely knit together here, save in
certain spots, especially the old spots. In Boston they understand each
other with very few words said. So they do in Charleston. But these spots
of condensed and hoarded understanding lie far apart, are never
confluent, and also differ in their details; while the whole of England
is confluent, and the details have been slowly worked out through
centuries of getting on together, and are accepted and observed exactly
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: body of tile Pythia, or the medicine-man, is placed under the
direct control of some great deity,[180] we may see how by
insensible transitions the conception of the human ghost
passes into the conception of the spiritual numen, or
divinity.
[179] The following citation is interesting as an illustration
of the directness of descent from heathen manes-worship to
Christian saint-worship: "It is well known that Romulus,
mindful of his own adventurous infancy, became after death a
Roman deity, propitious to the health and safety of young
children, so that nurses and mothers would carry sickly
Myths and Myth-Makers |
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 Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy: some way of true loving-kindness, and not by sending
him a valentine's letter."
Bathsheba laid down the shears.
"I cannot allow any man to -- to criticise my private
Conduct!" she exclaimed. "Nor will I for a minute.
So you'll please leave the farm at the end of the week!"
It may have been a peculiarity -- at any rate it was
a fact -- that when Bathsheba was swayed by an emotion
of an earthly sort her lower lip trembled: when by a
refined emotion, her upper or heavenward one. Her
nether lip quivered now.
Far From the Madding Crowd |
