| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: they are finished."
"As long as you please," said the count.
"No hurry at all," observed the captain, who was not in the least
impatient to continue his mathematical exercises.
"Then, gentlemen," said the astronomer, "with your leave we
will for this purpose make an appointment a few weeks hence.
What do you say to the 62d of April?"
Without noticing the general smile which the novel date provoked,
the astronomer left the hall, and retired to his observatory.
CHAPTER V
WANTED: A STEELYARD
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: attack; had any design on Mulinuu been in the wind, not even a
Samoan general would have detached these troops upon the other
side. While they still spoke, five Tamasese women were brought in
with their hands bound; they had been stealing "our" bananas.
All morning the town was strangely deserted, the very children
gone. A sense of expectation reigned, and sympathy for the attack
was expressed publicly. Some men with unblacked faces came to
Moors's store for biscuit. A native woman, who was there
marketing, inquired after the news, and, hearing that the battle
was now near at hand, "Give them two more tins," said she; "and
don't put them down to my husband - he would growl; put them down
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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 Timaeus by Plato: by the progress of physical science, how the responsibility of man is to be
reconciled with his dependence on natural causes. And sometimes, like
other men, he is more impressed by one aspect of human life, sometimes by
the other. In the Republic he represents man as freely choosing his own
lot in a state prior to birth--a conception which, if taken literally,
would still leave him subject to the dominion of necessity in his after
life; in the Statesman he supposes the human race to be preserved in the
world only by a divine interposition; while in the Timaeus the supreme God
commissions the inferior deities to avert from him all but self-inflicted
evils--words which imply that all the evils of men are really self-
inflicted. And here, like Plato (the insertion of a note in the text of an
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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 Art of War by Sun Tzu: carefully point out that the saying has a wider application.]
Do not interfere with an army that is returning home.
[The commentators explain this rather singular piece of
advice by saying that a man whose heart is set on returning home
will fight to the death against any attempt to bar his way, and
is therefore too dangerous an opponent to be tackled. Chang Yu
quotes the words of Han Hsin: "Invincible is the soldier who
hath his desire and returneth homewards." A marvelous tale is
told of Ts`ao Ts`ao's courage and resource in ch. 1 of the SAN
KUO CHI: In 198 A.D., he was besieging Chang Hsiu in Jang, when
Liu Piao sent reinforcements with a view to cutting off Ts`ao's
The Art of War |
