| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Kenilworth by Walter Scott: flew from tongue to tongue, the import of which they were for
some time unable to discover. At length, indeed, they found it
respected matters which touched them nearly.
"What is the matter, say you, master?" answered, at length, the
head hostler, in reply to Tressilian's repeated questions.--"Why,
truly, I scarce know myself. But here was a rider but now, who
says that the devil hath flown away with him they called Wayland
Smith, that won'd about three miles from the Whitehorse of
Berkshire, this very blessed morning, in a flash of fire and a
pillar of smoke, and rooted up the place he dwelt in, near that
old cockpit of upright stones, as cleanly as if it had all been
Kenilworth |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: Algonquins, Central-Americans, Abipones, Basutos, and Zulus
are cited by Mr. Tylor as thus implicitly asserting the
identity of the shadow with the ghost or phantasm seen in
dreams; the Basutos going so far as to think "that if a man
walks on the river-bank, a crocodile may seize his shadow in
the water and draw him in." Among the Algonquins a sick person
is supposed to have his shadow or other self temporarily
detached from his body, and the convalescent is at times
"reproached for exposing himself before his shadow was safely
settled down in him." If the sick man has been plunged into
stupor, it is because his other self has travelled away as far
Myths and Myth-Makers |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Horse's Tale by Mark Twain: Antonio, but I know enough to know it's grand sport."
"The grandest in the world! There's no other sport that begins
with it. I'll tell you what I've seen, then you can judge. It was
my first, and it's as vivid to me now as it was when I saw it. It
was a Sunday afternoon, and beautiful weather, and my uncle, the
priest, took me as a reward for being a good boy and because of my
own accord and without anybody asking me I had bankrupted my
savings-box and given the money to a mission that was civilizing
the Chinese and sweetening their lives and softening their hearts
with the gentle teachings of our religion, and I wish you could
have seen what we saw that day, Thorndike.
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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 Alcibiades I by Plato: ALCIBIADES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Did you ever observe that the face of the person looking into
the eye of another is reflected as in a mirror; and in the visual organ
which is over against him, and which is called the pupil, there is a sort
of image of the person looking?
ALCIBIADES: That is quite true.
SOCRATES: Then the eye, looking at another eye, and at that in the eye
which is most perfect, and which is the instrument of vision, will there
see itself?
ALCIBIADES: That is evident.
SOCRATES: But looking at anything else either in man or in the world, and
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