| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War by Frederick A. Talbot: considerable extent. Often, even when an aeroplane descended
within the German lines, it was found that the roving airman had
paid the penalty for his rashness with his life, so that his
journey had proved in vain, because all the intelligence he had
gained had died with him, or, if committed to paper, was so
unintelligible as to prove useless.
It was the success of the British airmen in this particular field
of duty which was responsible for the momentous declaration in
Field-Marshal Sir John French's famous despatch:--"The British
Flying Corps has succeeded in establishing an individual
ascendancy, which is as serviceable to us as it is damaging to
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Smalcald Articles by Dr. Martin Luther: beds, etc., fought against [strove to resist] evil thoughts,
and in full earnest and with force wanted to be holy, and yet
the hereditary, inborn evil sometimes did in sleep what it is
wont to do (as also St. Augustine and Jerome among others
confess), -- still each one held the other in esteem, so that
some, according to our teaching, were regarded as holy,
without sin and full of good works, so much so that with this
mind we would communicate and sell our good works to others,
as being superfluous to us for heaven. This is indeed true,
and seals, letters, and instances [that this happened] are at
hand.
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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 Fantastic Fables by Ambrose Bierce: The Citizen and the Snakes
A PUBLIC-SPIRITED Citizen who had failed miserably in trying to
secure a National political convention for his city suffered
acutely from dejection. While in that frame of mind he leaned
thoughtlessly against a druggist's show-window, wherein were one
hundred and fifty kinds of assorted snakes. The glass breaking,
the reptiles all escaped into the street.
"When you can't do what you wish," said the Public-spirited
Citizen, "it is worth while to do what you can."
Fortune and the Fabulist
A WRITER of Fables was passing through a lonely forest when he met
Fantastic Fables |
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 A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: govern? The merely lucky ones and the hereditary ones do not owe
their position to their qualifications at all. As to the rest, the
realism which seems their essential qualification often consists not
only in a lack of romantic imagination, which lack is a merit, but of
the realistic, constructive, Utopian imagination, which lack is a
ghastly defect. Freedom from imaginative illusion is therefore no
guarantee whatever of nobility of character: that is why inculcated
submissiveness makes us slaves to people much worse than ourselves,
and why it is so important that submissiveness should no longer be
inculcated.
And yet as long as you have the compulsory school as we know it, we
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