| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Memorabilia by Xenophon: considering how serious a business it is to cater for one's own
private needs, I look upon it as the mark of a fool not to be content
with that, but to further saddle oneself with the duty of providing
the rest of the community with whatever they may be pleased to want.
That, at the cost of much personal enjoyment, a man should put himself
at the head of a state, and then, if he fail to carry through every
jot and tittle of that state's desire, be held to criminal account,
does seem to me the very extravagance of folly. Why, bless me! states
claim to treat their rulers precisely as I treat my domestic slaves. I
expect my attendants to furnish me with an abundance of necessaries,
but not to lay a finger on one of them themselves. So these states
The Memorabilia |
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 Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne: blazing. But though the Tartars had left their traces on
all sides, they themselves were not to be seen as yet, for they
were more especially massed at the approaches to Irkutsk.
All this time the pilgrims were repeating their prayers
aloud, and the old boatman, shoving away the blocks of
ice which pressed too near them, imperturbably steered the
raft in the middle of the rapid current of the Angara.
CHAPTER XI
BETWEEN TWO BANKS
BY eight in the evening, the country, as the state of the
sky had foretold, was enveloped in complete darkness. The
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