| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: the wrong half. The route indicated for my party was up the
bed of the so-called river Vaea, which I accordingly followed
to a distance of perhaps two or three furlongs eastward from
the house of Vailima, where the stream being quite dry, the
bush thick, and the ground very difficult, I decided to leave
the main body of the force under my command tied to a tree,
and push on myself with the point of the advance guard,
consisting of one man. The valley had become very narrow and
airless; foliage close shut above; dry bed of the stream much
excavated, so that I passed under fallen trees without
stooping. Suddenly it turned sharply to the north, at right
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: at the breast, and reared by women to perform the crude brute labour which
is performed today by one small, well-adjusted steam crane; and the demand
for large masses of human creatures as mere reservoirs of motor force for
accomplishing the simplest processes was imperative. So strong, indeed,
was the consciousness of the importance to society of continuous child-
bearing on the part of woman, that as late as the middle of the sixteenth
century Martin Luther wrote: "If a woman becomes weary or at last dead
from bearing, that matters not; let her only die from bearing, she is there
to do it;" and he doubtless gave expression, in a crude and somewhat brutal
form, to a conviction common to the bulk of his contemporaries, both male
and female.
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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 When a Man Marries by Mary Roberts Rinehart: even the thirst following the South American goulash was gone.
There was probably something to eat in the pantry, and if there
was not, I was quite equal to going to the basement.
As it happened, however, I found a very orderly assortment of
left-overs and a pitcher of milk, which had no business there in
the pantry, and with plenty of light I was not at all frightened.
I ate bread and butter and drank milk, and was fast becoming a
rational person again; I had pulled out one of the drawers part
way, and with a tray across the corner I had improvised a
comfortable seat. And then I noticed that the drawer was full of
soiled napkins, and I remembered the bracelet. I hardly know why
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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 Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli: another.
CHAPTER III
CONCERNING MIXED PRINCIPALITIES
But the difficulties occur in a new principality. And firstly, if it
be not entirely new, but is, as it were, a member of a state which,
taken collectively, may be called composite, the changes arise chiefly
from an inherent difficulty which there is in all new principalities;
for men change their rulers willingly, hoping to better themselves,
and this hope induces them to take up arms against him who rules:
wherein they are deceived, because they afterwards find by experience
they have gone from bad to worse. This follows also on another natural
The Prince |
