| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: something else, then he is refuted and not I. For do you really suppose
that any one would admit the memory which a man has of an impression which
has passed away to be the same with that which he experienced at the time?
Assuredly not. Or would he hesitate to acknowledge that the same man may
know and not know the same thing? Or, if he is afraid of making this
admission, would he ever grant that one who has become unlike is the same
as before he became unlike? Or would he admit that a man is one at all,
and not rather many and infinite as the changes which take place in him? I
speak by the card in order to avoid entanglements of words. But, O my good
sir, he will say, come to the argument in a more generous spirit; and
either show, if you can, that our sensations are not relative and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: king of the ghost-wolves, yet, bearing the Watcher, thou shalt thyself
be slain. Now, on the morrow carry me back to my mother, so that I may
sleep where the ghost-wolves leap no more. I have spoken, Galazi.'
"Now the Dead One's voice seemed to grow ever fainter and more hollow
as he spoke, till at the last I could scarcely hear his words, yet I
answered him, asking him this:--
"'Who is it, then, that the lion shall bring to me to rule with me
over the ghost-wolves, and how is he named?'
"Then the Dead One spoke once more very faintly, yet in the silence of
the place I heard his words:--
"'He is named Umslopogaas the Slaughterer, son of Chaka, Lion of the
Nada the Lily |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: Taillefer. The former purveyor had negligently dropped his hand over
his eyes, but between the interstices of his fingers we thought we
caught a darkling flame proceeding from them.
"Hein?" she said in my ear, "what if his name were Frederic?"
I answered with a glance, which said to her: "Silence!"
Hermann continued:]
"Frederic!" cried the young surgeon, "Frederic basely deserted me. He
must have been afraid. Perhaps he is still hidden in the inn, for our
horses were both in the courtyard this morning. What an
incomprehensible mystery!" he went on, after a moment's silence.
"Somnambulism! somnambulism? I never had but one attack in my life,
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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 Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: gentlemen from the universities are encouraged, at so much a line,
to garble facts, insult foreign nations and calumniate private
individuals; and which are now the source of glory, so that if a
man's name be often enough printed there, he becomes a kind of
demigod; and people will pardon him when he talks back and forth,
as they do for Mr. Gladstone; and crowd him to suffocation on
railway platforms, as they did the other day to General Boulanger;
and buy his literary works, as I hope you have just done for me.
Our fathers, when they were upon some great enterprise, would
sacrifice a life; building, it may be, a favourite slave into the
foundations of their palace. It was with his own life that my
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