| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: "I am bound to believe you," said the priest. He paused a moment, and
again he scrutinized his penitent. But, persisting in the idea that
the man before him was one of the members of the Convention, one of
the voters who betrayed an inviolable and anointed head to save their
own, he began again gravely:
"Remember, my son, that it is not enough to have taken no active part
in the great crime; that fact does not absolve you. The men who might
have defended the King and left their swords in their scabbards, will
have a very heavy account to render to the King of Heaven--Ah! yes,"
he added, with an eloquent shake of the head, "heavy indeed!--for by
doing nothing they became accomplices in the awful wickedness----"
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: at the moment he was dying in his own house."
[167] Tylor, op. cit. II. 139.
[168] In Russia the souls of the dead are supposed to be
embodied in pigeons or crows. "Thus when the Deacon Theodore
and his three schismatic brethren were burnt in 1681, the
souls of the martyrs, as the 'Old Believers' affirm, appeared
in the air as pigeons. In Volhynia dead children are supposed
to come back in the spring to their native village under the
semblance of swallows and other small birds, and to seek by
soft twittering or song to console their sorrowing parents."
Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 118.
Myths and Myth-Makers |
