| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Pathology of Lying, Etc. by William and Mary Healy: one interview her first words were, ``Do you know now, doctor,
that I was in a State hospital?'' Having made this challenging
statement she went no further, merely involved herself in
contradictions as to the place, and would say nothing more than
that she had once suffered from an attack of nervous prostration.
She absolutely denied items of information about herself which we
had gradually accumulated, and this type of reaction obtained all
the way through our last period of acquaintance with Inez, even
after we had the detailed facts about her early life from her
parents.
Inez never lost an opportunity to impress upon people whom she
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom by William and Ellen Craft: exhorts him:--"YOUR RIGHT TO BE FREE IS NOT ABSOLUTE,
UNQUALIFIED, IRRESPECTIVE OF ALL CONSEQUENCES. If my
espousal of your claim is likely to involve your race
and mine together in disasters infinitely greater
than your personal servitude, then you ought not
to be free. In such a case personal rights ought
to be sacrificed to the general good. You yourself
ought to see this, and be willing to suffer for a while
--one for many."
If the Doctor is prepared, he is quite at liberty
to sacrifice his "personal rights to the general
Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: his worth and his wealth, the more and more was he mastered by
fear, and regrets that he had not stayed the night at Grishkino
dominated and mingled in all his thoughts.
'Devil take the forest! Things were all right without it,
thank God. Ah, if we had only put up for the night!' he said
to himself. 'They say it's drunkards that freeze,' he thought,
'and I have had some drink.' And observing his sensations he
noticed that he was beginning to shiver, without knowing
whether it was from cold or from fear. He tried to wrap
himself up and lie down as before, but could no longer do so.
He could not stay in one position. He wanted to get up, to do
Master and Man |
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 Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: facts, and learn from them, as the predecessors whom they pretended to
honour had done. But so it is always. A genius, an original man
appears. He puts himself boldly in contact with facts, asks them what
they mean, and writes down their answer for the world's use. And then
his disciples must needs form a school, and a system; and fancy that
they do honour to their master by refusing to follow in his steps; by
making his book a fixed dogmatic canon; attaching to it some magical
infallibility; declaring the very lie which he disproved by his whole
existence, that discovery is henceforth impossible, and the sum of
knowledge complete: instead of going on to discover as he discovered
before them, and in following his method, show that they honour him, not
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