| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: The scene suggests reflections on fame and on man's
injustice to the dead. You see Dugald Stewart rather
more handsomely commemorated than Burns. Immediately
below, in the Canongate churchyard, lies Robert
Fergusson, Burns's master in his art, who died insane
while yet a stripling; and if Dugald Stewart has been
somewhat too boisterously acclaimed, the Edinburgh poet,
on the other hand, is most unrighteously forgotten. The
votaries of Burns, a crew too common in all ranks in
Scotland and more remarkable for number than discretion,
eagerly suppress all mention of the lad who handed to him
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe: had told me at Chester he was ruined by that match, and that
his fortunes were made desperate on my account; for that
thinking I had been a fortune, he was run into debt more than
he was able to pay, and that he knew not what course to take;
that he would go into the army and carry a musket, or buy a
horse and take a tour, as he called it; and though I never told
him that I was a fortune, and so did not actually deceive him
myself, yet I did encourage the having it thought that I was so,
and by that means I was the occasion originally of his mischief.
The surprise of the thing only struck deeper into my thoughts,
any gave me stronger reflections than all that had befallen me
Moll Flanders |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey: to town, village to village, ranch to ranch, camp to camp. I
never stayed long in one place. I never had but one idea. I never
rested. Four years went by, an' I knowed every trail in northern
Utah. I kept on an' as time went by, an' I'd begun to grow old in
my search, I had firmer, blinder faith in whatever was guidin'
me. Once I read about a feller who sailed the seven seas an'
traveled the world, an' he had a story to tell, an' whenever he
seen the man to whom he must tell that story he knowed him on
sight. I was like that, only I had a question to ask. An' always
I knew the man of whom I must ask. So I never really lost the
trail, though for many years it was the dimmest trail ever
Riders of the Purple Sage |
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 God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: as it is not otherworldly, must necessarily set its stamp upon the
methods and administration of the law. That this was not the case
with Christianity is one of the many contributory aspects that lead
one to the conviction that it was not Christianity that took
possession of the Roman empire, but an imperial adventurer who took
possession of an all too complaisant Christianity.
Reverting now from these generalisations to the problem of the
religious from which they arose, it will have become evident that
the essential work of anyone who is conversant with the existing
practice and literature of the law and whose natural abilities are
forensic, will lie in the direction of reconstructing the theory and
|
