| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: The minds of men are sometimes carried on to think of their lives and of
their actions as links in a chain of causes and effects going back to the
beginning of time. A few have seemed to lose the sense of their own
individuality in the universal cause or nature. In like manner we might
think of the words which we daily use, as derived from the first speech of
man, and of all the languages in the world, as the expressions or varieties
of a single force or life of language of which the thoughts of men are the
accident. Such a conception enables us to grasp the power and wonder of
languages, and is very natural to the scientific philologist. For he, like
the metaphysician, believes in the reality of that which absorbs his own
mind. Nor do we deny the enormous influence which language has exercised
|
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 Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: see he's got some great scheme in his mind he wants to emit.
"'Buck,' says he, all interested, 'I'll tell you what! I want to make
this a red-letter day. I've been keeping close at home, and I want to
turn myself a-loose. We'll have the highest old time you ever saw.
We'll go in the back room here and play checkers till half-past six.'
"I leaned against the bar, and I says to Gotch-eared Mike, who was on
watch:
"'For God's sake don't mention this. You know what Perry used to be.
He's had the fever, and the doctor says we must humour him.'
"'Give us the checker-board and the men, Mike,' says Perry. 'Come on,
Buck, I'm just wild to have some excitement.'
|
