| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: suppose to my dying day."
"Tell us the yarn, Quatermain," said Good. "You have often promised to
tell me, and you never have."
"You had better not ask me to," he answered, "for it is a longish one."
"All right," I said, "the evening is young, and there is some more
port."
Thus adjured, he filled his pipe from a jar of coarse-cut Boer tobacco
that was always standing on the mantelpiece, and still walking up and
down the room, began--
"It was, I think, in the March of '69 that I was up in Sikukuni's
country. It was just after old Sequati's time, and Sikukuni had got
Long Odds |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: the parents, seem to have the best title to the children.
Infant's flesh will be in season throughout the year, but more
plentiful in March, and a little before and after; for we are
told by a grave author, an eminent French physician, that fish
being a prolifick dyet, there are more children born in Roman
Catholick countries about nine months after Lent, the markets
will be more glutted than usual, because the number of Popish
infants, is at least three to one in this kingdom, and therefore
it will have one other collateral advantage, by lessening the
number of Papists among us.
I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar's child
A Modest Proposal |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: that his work needs no such justification, and that if he had
allowed his vision to be disturbed by considerations regarding the
practical use of his discoveries, those discoveries would never have
been made by him. 'I have rather,' he writes in 1831, 'been desirous
of discovering new facts and new relations dependent on
magneto-electric induction, than of exalting the force of those
already obtained; being assured that the latter would find their
full development hereafter.'
In 1817, when lecturing before a private society in London on the
element chlorine, Faraday thus expressed himself with reference to
this question of utility. 'Before leaving this subject, I will point
|
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 The Koran: doles it out to him; verily, God all things doth know.
And if thou shouldst ask them, 'Who sends down from the heavens
water and quickens therewith the earth in its death?' they will surely
say, 'God!' say, 'And praise be to God!' nay, most of them have no
sense.
This life of the world is nothing but a sport and a play; but,
verily, the abode of the next world, that is life,-if they did but
know!
And when they ride in the ship they call upon God, making their
religion seem sincere to Him; but when He saves them to the shore,
behold, they associate others with Him; that they may disbelieve in
The Koran |
