| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from First Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the government must cease.
There is no other alternative; for continuing the government is
acquiescence on one side or the other.
If a minority in such case will secede rather than acquiesce,
they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them;
for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever
a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority.
For instance, why may not any portion of a new
confederacy a year or two hence arbitrarily secede again,
precisely as portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it?
All who cherish disunion sentiments are now being educated to the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: the stranger's face, while his own remained obscured.
"Excuse me, abbe," said the envoy of the prefect of the
police, "but the light tries my eyes very much." The abbe
lowered the shade. "Now, sir, I am listening -- go on."
"I will come at once to the point. Do you know the Count of
Monte Cristo?"
"You mean Monsieur Zaccone, I presume?"
"Zaccone? -- is not his name Monte Cristo?"
"Monte Cristo is the name of an estate, or, rather, of a
rock, and not a family name."
"Well, be it so -- let us not dispute about words; and since
The Count of Monte Cristo |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: honourably on the points of Cossack's lances, or perchance
escaping the chase would have died decently of starvation. But
before they had time to think of running away, that fatal and
revolting dog, being carried away by the excess of his zeal,
dashed out through a gap in the fence. He dashed out and died.
His head, I understand, was severed at one blow from his body. I
understand also that later on, within the gloomy solitudes of the
snow-laden woods, when, in a sheltering hollow, a fire had been
lit by the party, the condition of the quarry was discovered to
be distinctly unsatisfactory. It was not thin--on the contrary,
it seemed unhealthily obese; its skin showed bare patches of an
Some Reminiscences |
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 Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: freedom. The wider sympathy is, of course, the more difficult. It
requires more unselfishness. Anybody can sympathise with the
sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature - it
requires, in fact, the nature of a true Individualist - to
sympathise with a friend's success.
In the modern stress of competition and struggle for place, such
sympathy is naturally rare, and is also very much stifled by the
immoral ideal of uniformity of type and conformity to rule which is
so prevalent everywhere, and is perhaps most obnoxious in England.
Sympathy with pain there will, of course, always be. It is one of
the first instincts of man. The animals which are individual, the
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