| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson: advice from point to point: and remember, if you fail me in only
one particular, you will bring the sharpest trouble on a woman
whose only fault is to have seen and loved you."
"I cannot see the use of all these instructions," said Silas.
"I believe you are already beginning to treat me as a master," she
cried, tapping him with her fan upon the arm. "Patience, patience!
that should come in time. A woman loves to be obeyed at first,
although afterwards she finds her pleasure in obeying. Do as I ask
you, for Heaven's sake, or I will answer for nothing. Indeed, now
I think of it," she added, with the manner of one who has just seen
further into a difficulty, "I find a better plan of keeping
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: just in time, from a country untouched, unafflicted, unbombed, safe,
because of England's ships, to tired, broken, bleeding England; and that
the sight of us, so jaunty, so fresh, so innocent of suffering and
bereavement, should have been for a thoughtless moment galling to
unthinking brains?
I am perfectly sure that if such considerations as these were laid before
any American soldier who still smarted under that taunt in London
streets, his good American sense, which is our best possession, would
grasp and accept the thing in its true proportions. He wouldn't want to
blot an Empire out because a handful of muckers called him names. Of this
I am perfectly sure, because in Paris streets it was my happy lot four
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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 Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter: think, from many hints scattered in the course of it, be growing
clear. But it will be well perhaps in this chapter,
at the risk of some repetition, to bring the whole argument
together. And the argument is that since the dawn
of humanity on the earth--many hundreds of thousands
or perhaps a million years ago--there has been a slow psychologic
evolution, a gradual development or refinement of
Consciousness, which at a certain stage has spontaneously
given birth in the human race to the phenomena of religious
belief and religious ritual--these phenomena (whether in
the race at large or in any branch of it) always following,
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
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 Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: standing in the world. For them the earliest salmon is caught in
our eastern rivers, and the shy woodcock stains the dry leaves
with his blood in his remotest haunts, and the turtle comes from
the far Pacific Islands to be gobbled up in soup. They can afford
to flavor all their dishes with indolence, which, in spite of the
general opinion, is a sauce more exquisitely piquant than
appetite won by exercise. Apoplexy is another highly respectable
disease. We will rank together all who have the symptom of
dizziness in the brain, and as fast as any drop by the way supply
their places with new members of the board of aldermen.
On the other hand, here come whole tribes of people whose
Mosses From An Old Manse |
