| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: cavaliers; princes and nobles appear in night-rails and
petticoats; men shall squeak upon theatres with female voices,
and women corrupt virgins; lords shall knot and cut paper; and
even the northern people.........:" A Greek phrase (which for
modesty's sake I forbear to translate) which denotes a vice too
frequent amongst us.
That the Ministry foresaw this great change, is plain from the
Callico-Act; whereby it is now become the occupation of women all
over England, to convert their useless female habits into beds,
window-curtains, chairs, and joint-stools; undressing themselves
(as it were) before their transformation.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson: we lay in a heather bush on the hillside in Uam Var, within view
of a herd of deer, the happiest ten hours of sleep in a fine,
breathing sunshine and on bone-dry ground, that I have ever
tasted. That night we struck Allan Water, and followed it down;
and coming to the edge of the hills saw the whole Carse of
Stirling underfoot, as flat as a pancake, with the town and
castle on a hill in the midst of it, and the moon shining on the
Links of Forth.
"Now," said Alan, "I kenna if ye care, but ye're in your own land
again. We passed the Hieland Line in the first hour; and now if
we could but pass yon crooked water, we might cast our bonnets in
Kidnapped |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: further dictates that, since all our thoughts cannot be true because of
our partial imperfection, those possessing truth must infallibly be found
in the experience of our waking moments rather than in that of our dreams.
PART V
I would here willingly have proceeded to exhibit the whole chain of truths
which I deduced from these primary but as with a view to this it would
have been necessary now to treat of many questions in dispute among the
earned, with whom I do not wish to be embroiled, I believe that it will be
better for me to refrain from this exposition, and only mention in general
what these truths are, that the more judicious may be able to determine
whether a more special account of them would conduce to the public
Reason Discourse |
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 Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: anxieties have lapsed into the background entirely; the official
habits are replaced by the habits of a son of nature, and those
who knew the man only as the strenuous magistrate would not "know
him for the same person" if they saw him as the camper.
If now he should never go back, and never again suffer political
interests to gain dominion over him, he would be for practical
intents and purposes a permanently transformed being. Our
ordinary alterations of character, as we pass from one of our
aims to another, are not commonly called transformations, because
each of them is so rapidly succeeded by another in the reverse
direction; but whenever one aim grows so stable as to expel
|
