| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Oakdale Affair by Edgar Rice Burroughs: boy's admission of his terror of both the real and the
unreal menaces of this night of horror.
That the girl also was well bred was quite evident
to Bridge, while both the girl and the youth realized the
refinement of the strange companion and protector
which Fate had ordered for them, while they also saw
in one another social counterparts of themselves. Thus,
as the night dragged its slow course, the three came to
trust each other more entirely and to speculate upon the
strange train of circumstances which had brought them
thus remarkably together--the thief, the murderer's ac-
The Oakdale Affair |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter: like that of Jesus--a gospel of love to mankind--only (as
might be expected from the difference of date) with an
even wider and more deliberate inclusion of all classes,
creeds and races, sinners and saints; and the incidents
and entourage of his ministry were also singularly similar.
He was born at Shiraz in 1820, and growing up a promising
boy and youth, fell at the age Of 21 under the influence
of a certain Seyyid Kazim, leader of a heterodox sect, and
a kind of fore-runner or John the Baptist to the Bab. The
result was a period of mental trouble (like the "temptation
in the wilderness"), after which the youth returned
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Adventure by Jack London: for some way out of the muddle--for some method by which she could
remain on Berande. A chaperone! Why not? He could send to Sydney
on the first steamer for one. He could -
Her trilling laughter smote upon his reverie, and he stepped to the
screen-door, through which he could see her running down the path
to the beach. At her heels ran two of her sailors, Papehara and
Mahameme, in scarlet lava-lavas, with naked sheath-knives gleaming
in their belts. It was another sample of her wilfulness. Despite
entreaties and commands, and warnings of the danger from sharks,
she persisted in swimming at any and all times, and by special
preference, it seemed to him, immediately after eating.
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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 Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: the Bourgeois Republic meant the unbridled despotism of one class over
another. It proved that, with nations enjoying an older civilization,
having developed class distinctions, modern conditions of production, an
intellectual consciousness, wherein all traditions of old have been
dissolved through the work of centuries, that with such countries the
republic means only the political revolutionary form of bourgeois
society, not its conservative form of existence, as is the case in the
United States of America, where, true enough, the classes already exist,
but have not yet acquired permanent character, are in constant flux and
reflux, constantly changing their elements and yielding them up to one
another where the modern means of production, instead of coinciding with
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