| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain: ascended the parapet and there found the king and the
court assembled and gazing off in the darkness toward
Merlin's Tower. Already the darkness was so heavy
that one could not see far; these people and the old
turrets, being partly in deep shadow and partly in the
red glow from the great torch-baskets overhead, made
a good deal of a picture.
Merlin arrived in a gloomy mood. I said:
"You wanted to burn me alive when I had not done
you any harm, and latterly you have been trying to
injure my professional reputation. Therefore I am
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: reprinted at Hartford, United States, in 1820." *b The author
divided his work into seven books. The first presents the
history of the events which prepared and brought about the
establishment of New England. The second contains the lives of
the first governors and chief magistrates who presided over the
country. The third is devoted to the lives and labors of the
evangelical ministers who, during the same period, had the care
of souls. In the fourth the author relates the institution and
progress of the University of Cambridge (Massachusetts). In the
fifth he describes the principles and the discipline of the
Church of New England. The sixth is taken up in retracing
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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 Philebus by Plato: infinite, and are liable to every species of excess. And here several
questions arise for consideration:--What is the meaning of pure and impure,
of moderate and immoderate? We may answer the question by an illustration:
Purity of white paint consists in the clearness or quality of the white,
and this is distinct from the quantity or amount of white paint; a little
pure white is fairer than a great deal which is impure. But there is
another question:--Pleasure is affirmed by ingenious philosophers to be a
generation; they say that there are two natures--one self-existent, the
other dependent; the one noble and majestic, the other failing in both
these qualities. 'I do not understand.' There are lovers and there are
loves. 'Yes, I know, but what is the application?' The argument is in
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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 Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: girdles; there to the right of the stone of sacrifice were those
destined to the god, and there being led towards it was the first
victim, a Tlascalan prisoner, his limbs held by men clad in the
dress of priests. Near him, arrayed in the scarlet robe of
sacrifice, stood one of my own captains, who I remembered had once
served as a priest of Tezcat before idolatry was forbidden in the
City of Pines, and around were a wide circle of women that watched,
and from whose lips swelled the awful chant.
Now I understood it all. In their last despair, maddened by the
loss of fathers, husbands, and children, by their cruel fate, and
standing face to face with certain death, the fire of the old faith
Montezuma's Daughter |
