| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: lives, and we can no longer dismiss them from our mind. Many of them
express relations of terms to which nothing exactly or nothing at all in
rerum natura corresponds. We are not such free agents in the use of them
as we sometimes imagine. Fixed ideas have taken the most complete
possession of some thinkers who have been most determined to renounce them,
and have been vehemently affirmed when they could be least explained and
were incapable of proof. The world has often been led away by a word to
which no distinct meaning could be attached. Abstractions such as
'authority,' 'equality,' 'utility,' 'liberty,' 'pleasure,' 'experience,'
'consciousness,' 'chance,' 'substance,' 'matter,' 'atom,' and a heap of
other metaphysical and theological terms, are the source of quite as much
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll: blown up!'
Alice watched the White King as he slowly struggled up from bar
to bar, till at last she said, `Why, you'll be hours and hours
getting to the table, at that rate. I'd far better help you,
hadn't I?' But the King took no notice of the question: it was
quite clear that he could neither hear her nor see her.
So Alice picked him up very gently, and lifted him across more
slowly than she had lifted the Queen, that she mightn't take his
breath away: but, before she put him on the table, she thought
she might as well dust him a little, he was so covered with
ashes.
Through the Looking-Glass |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: of the French noblesse, holding out hopes to them which could only be
realized by a complete and general topsy-turvydom, the distance
between Angouleme and L'Houmeau, already more strongly marked than the
distance between the hill and plain, was widened yet further. The
better families, all devoted as one man to the Government, grew more
exclusive here than in any other part of France. "The man of
L'Houmeau" became little better than a pariah. Hence the deep,
smothered hatred which broke out everywhere with such ugly unanimity
in the insurrection of 1830 and destroyed the elements of a durable
social system in France. As the overweening haughtiness of the Court
nobles detached the provincial noblesse from the throne, so did these
|
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 Marie by H. Rider Haggard: "Say, nephew Allan," asked Retief curiously in the pause between the
fifth and sixth shots, "why do your geese fall so differently to
Hernan's?"
"Ask him! don't talk to me," I answered, and next instant brought down
number five, the finest shot of the lot.
A sound of wonder and applause came from all the audience, and I saw
Marie wave a white handkerchief.
"That's the end," said the referee.
"One minute before you stir," I answered. "I want to shoot at something
else that is not in the match, just to see if I can kill two birds with
one bullet like the Heer Pereira."
Marie |
