| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Daisy Miller by Henry James: to which his aunt had alluded. "I don't believe that there
is anything to be called an intrigue."
"I have heard a dozen people speak of it; they say she is quite carried
away by him."
"They are certainly very intimate," said Winterbourne.
Mrs. Costello inspected the young couple again with her optical instrument.
"He is very handsome. One easily sees how it is. She thinks
him the most elegant man in the world, the finest gentleman.
She has never seen anything like him; he is better, even, than the courier.
It was the courier probably who introduced him; and if he succeeds in marrying
the young lady, the courier will come in for a magnificent commission."
|
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 Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: devised for the purpose of explaining the obscure phenomena of
mental disease. If this be so, they afford an excellent
collateral illustration of the belief in werewolves. The same
mental habits which led men to regard the insane or epileptic
person as a changeling, and which allowed them to explain
catalepsy as the temporary departure of a witch's soul from
its body, would enable them to attribute a wolf's nature to
the maniac or idiot with cannibal appetites. And when the
myth-forming process had got thus far, it would not stop short
of assigning to the unfortunate wretch a tangible lupine body;
for all ancient mythology teemed with precedents for such a
Myths and Myth-Makers |
