| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: may be helped by laws, as a weak child by backboards, but when it is
old it cannot that way strengthen its crooked spine.
And besides; the problem of land, at its worst, is a bye one;
distribute the earth as you will, the principal question remains
inexorable,--Who is to dig it? Which of us, in brief word, is to do
the hard and dirty work for the rest, and for what pay? Who is to
do the pleasant and clean work, and for what pay? Who is do no
work, and for what pay? And there are curious moral and religious
questions connected with these. How far is it lawful to suck a
portion of the soul out of a great many persons, in order to put the
abstracted psychical quantities together and make one very beautiful
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: Hence the long roads my home I made;
Tossed much in ships; have often laid
Below the uncurtained sky my head,
Rain-deluged and wind-buffeted:
And many a thousand hills I crossed
And corners turned - Love's labour lost,
Till, Lady, to your isle of sun
I came, not hoping; and, like one
Snatched out of blindness, rubbed my eyes,
And hailed my promised land with cries.
Yes, Lady, here I was at last;
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Hermione's Little Group of Serious Thinkers by Don Marquis: And if England should conquer France, and put
a king on the throne there again, no doubt there will
be a great revival of fashion, as there was in the
days of Napoleon I. and the Empress Eugenie.
But if all the advanced thinkers in the world
could only get together in one place and THINK Peace
and Harmony -- sit down in circles, you know, and
send Psychic Vibrations across the ocean -- who can
tell but what the war might not end ?
The triumph of mind over matter, you know.
I'm going to propose the idea to our little group
|
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 Daisy Miller by Henry James: "And if you want very much to know, we are neither of us flirting;
we are too good friends for that: we are very intimate friends."
"Ah!" rejoined Winterbourne, "if you are in love with each other,
it is another affair."
She had allowed him up to this point to talk so frankly that
he had no expectation of shocking her by this ejaculation;
but she immediately got up, blushing visibly, and leaving
him to exclaim mentally that little American flirts were
the queerest creatures in the world. "Mr. Giovanelli,
at least," she said, giving her interlocutor a single glance,
"never says such very disagreeable things to me."
|
