| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Captain Dufranne, Lieutenant D'Arnot, and a dozen sailors had
rushed up at the sound of the shot, and now Tarzan turned
the Russian over to them without a word. He had explained
the matter to the French commander before Rokoff arrived,
and the officer gave immediate orders to place the Russian
in irons and confine him on board the cruiser.
Just before the guard escorted the prisoner into the small
boat that was to transport him to his temporary prison
Tarzan asked permission to search him, and to his delight
found the stolen papers concealed upon his person.
The shot had brought Jane Porter and the others from
The Return of Tarzan |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Finished by H. Rider Haggard: to Pilgrim's Rest. I say proposed, for when I looked up it I
perceived about five hundred yards away a number of armed Basutos
running towards us, the red light of the sunset shining on their
spears. Evidently the scout or spy to whom Rodd whistled, had
called them out of their ambush which they had set for us on the
Pilgrim's Rest road in order that they might catch us if we tried
to escape that way.
Now there was only one thing to be done. At this spot a native
track ran across the little stream and up a steepish slope
beyond. On the first occasion of our outspanning here I had the
curiosity to mount this slope, reflecting as I did so that
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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 Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: return to look upon the lands where they were born? Yet I never
thought much of such matters, though I am a doctor, and know something
of the ways of the Amatongo, the people of the ghosts. To speak truth,
my father, I have had so much to do with the loosing of the spirits of
men that I never troubled myself overmuch with them after they were
loosed; there will be time to do this when I myself am of their
number.
So I sat and gazed on the mountain and the forest that grew over it
like hair on the head of a woman, and as I gazed I heard a sound that
came from far away, out of the heart of the forest as it seemed. At
first it was faint and far off, a distant thing like the cry of
Nada the Lily |
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 Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri: regularity of crime, which from Quetelet's time has been much
exaggerated. There has been a too literal insistance on his
famous declaration that ``the budget of crime is an annual
taxation paid with more preciseness than any other''; and that it
is possible to calculate beforehand how many homicides, poisoners,
and forgers we shall have, because ``crimes are generated every
year in the same number, with the same punishments, in the same
proportions.'' And one constantly meets with this echo of the
statisticians, that ``from year to year crimes against the person
vary at the most by one in twenty-five, and those against
property by one in fifty''; or, again, that there is ``a law of
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