| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Sportsman by Xenophon: wild game. If posted in the van of battle, they will not desert their
ranks, because endurance is engrained in them. In the rout of the
enemy their footsteps will not falter nor fail: straight as an arrow
they will follow the flying foe, on every kind of ground, through long
habituation.[3] Or if their own army encounter a reverse on wooded and
precipitous ground beset with difficulties, these will be the men to
save themselves with honour and to extricate their friends; since long
acquaintance with the business of the chase has widened their
intelligence.[4]
[1] Or, "Respecting the methods employed in different forms of the
chase, I have said my say." As to the genuineness of this and 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 Rezanov by Gertrude Atherton: the steep and tangled ascent and returned to the
beach. Dona Ignacia immediately after dinner had
frankly asked her host for the hospitality of his
stateroom. She and her little ones must have their
siesta, and the good lady was convinced that so
high and mighty a personage as the Russian Cham-
berlain was all the chaperon the proprieties de-
manded.
Four of the party strayed along the crest in search
of the first wild pansies. Rezanov and Concha
looked under the sloping roof of brittle leaves into
Rezanov |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: the nineteenth century, criticize themselves constantly; constantly
interrupt themselves in their own course; come back to what seems to
have been accomplished, in order to start over anew; scorn with cruel
thoroughness the half measures, weaknesses and meannesses of their first
attempts; seem to throw down their adversary only in order to enable him
to draw fresh strength from the earth, and again, to rise up against
them in more gigantic stature; constantly recoil in fear before the
undefined monster magnitude of their own objects--until finally that
situation is created which renders all retreat impossible, and the
conditions themselves cry out:
"Hic Rhodus, hic salta !" [#2 Here is Rhodes, leap here! An allusion to
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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 Gorgias by Plato: world so also in another, by pain and suffering; for there is no other way
in which they can be delivered from their evil. But they who have been
guilty of the worst crimes, and are incurable by reason of their crimes,
are made examples; for, as they are incurable, the time has passed at which
they can receive any benefit. They get no good themselves, but others get
good when they behold them enduring for ever the most terrible and painful
and fearful sufferings as the penalty of their sins--there they are,
hanging up as examples, in the prison-house of the world below, a spectacle
and a warning to all unrighteous men who come thither. And among them, as
I confidently affirm, will be found Archelaus, if Polus truly reports of
him, and any other tyrant who is like him. Of these fearful examples,
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