| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: regiments, and thus, though men died by thousands every month, yet the
army grew. Soon there were no other chiefs left. Umsuduka fell, and
after him Mancengeza. Umzilikazi was driven north; Matiwane was
stamped flat. Then we poured into this land of Natal. When we entered,
its people could not be numbered. When we left, here and there a man
might be found in a hole in the earth--that was all. Men, women, and
children, we wiped them out; the land was clean of them. Next came the
turn of U'Faku, chief of the Amapondos. Ah! where is U'faku now?
And so it went on and on, till even the Zulus were weary of war and
the sharpest assegais grew blunt.
CHAPTER VI
Nada the Lily |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost: sensation caused by my flight from St. Sulpice, he would be sure
to treat me with infinitely more rigour now.
"At length, out of this chaos of fancies came an idea that all
at once restored ease to my mind, and which I was surprised at
not having hit upon sooner; this was, to go again to my friend
Tiberge, in whom I might be always sure of finding the same
unfailing zeal and friendship. There is nothing more
glorious--nothing that does more honour to true virtue, than the
confidence with which one approaches a friend of tried integrity;
no apprehension, no risk of unkind repulse: if it be not always
in his power to afford the required succour, one is sure at least
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: eyes the power which they now possess, enough has been said. I will
therefore now proceed to speak of the higher use and purpose for which God
has given them to us. The sight in my opinion is the source of the
greatest benefit to us, for had we never seen the stars, and the sun, and
the heaven, none of the words which we have spoken about the universe would
ever have been uttered. But now the sight of day and night, and the months
and the revolutions of the years, have created number, and have given us a
conception of time, and the power of enquiring about the nature of the
universe; and from this source we have derived philosophy, than which no
greater good ever was or will be given by the gods to mortal man. This is
the greatest boon of sight: and of the lesser benefits why should I speak?
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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 Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne: Feofar-Khan, or whether he was endeavoring to foment a
revolt in the government of Nijni-Novgorod, which at this
time of year contained a population of such diverse ele-
ments. Perhaps among the Persians, Armenians, or Kal-
mucks, who flocked to the great market, he had agents,
instructed to provoke a rising in the interior. All this was
possible, especially in such a country as Russia. In fact,
this vast empire, 4,000,000 square miles in extent, does
not possess the homogeneousness of the states of Western
Europe. The Russian territory in Europe and Asia
contains more than seventy millions of inhabitants. In
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