| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Thuvia, Maid of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: start the engine, roll up in my sleeping silks and furs,
and with lights burning, race through the air toward
Helium, confident that at the appointed hour I shall drop
gently toward the landing-stage upon my own palace,
whether I am still asleep or no."
"Provided," suggested Thuvan Dihn, "you do not chance
to collide with some other night wanderer in the meanwhile."
Carthoris smiled. "No danger of that," he replied.
"See here," and he indicated a device at the right of the
destination compass. "This is my `obstruction evader,'
as I call it. This visible device is the switch which throws
Thuvia, Maid of Mars |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: He set his hat firmly with a little tap, and next
moment she felt herself lifted up in the powerful
embrace of his arms. Her feet lost the ground;
her head hung back; he showered kisses on her face
with a silent and over-mastering ardour, as if in
haste to get at her very soul. He kissed her pale
cheeks, her hard forehead, her heavy eyelids, her
faded lips; and the measured blows and sighs of
the rising tide accompanied the enfolding power
of his arms, the overwhelming might of his caresses.
It was as if the sea, breaking down the wall pro-
To-morrow |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: market prices would now be less cruel, and that what had come as a gift
would be distributed as such. There were some within who so advised the
senate; but Marcius, standing up, sharply inveighed against those who
spoke in favor of the multitude, calling them flatterers of the rabble
traitors to the nobility, and alleging, that, by such gratifications,
they did but cherish those ill seeds of boldness and petulance that had
been sown among the people, to their own prejudice, which they should
have done well to observe and stifle at their first appearance, and not
have suffered the plebeians to grow so strong, by granting them
magistrates of such authority as the tribunes. They were, indeed, even
now formidable to the state, since everything they desired was granted
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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 The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: miser, worth L60,000."[94]
[94] Op. cit., Letter III., abridged.
Let me turn now to the kind of case, the religious case, namely,
that immediately concerns us. Here is one of the simplest
possible type, an account of the conversion to the systematic
religion of healthy-mindedness of a man who must already have
been naturally of the healthy-minded type. It shows how, when
the fruit is ripe, a touch will make it fall.
Mr. Horace Fletcher, in his little book called Menticulture,
relates that a friend with whom he was talking of the
self-control attained by the Japanese through their practice of
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