| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: It is of such a spacious lofty pitch,
Your roof were not sufficient to contain 't.
COUNTESS.
This is a riddling merchant for the nonce;
He will be here, and yet he is not here:
How can these contrarieties agree?
TALBOT.
That will I show you presently.
[Winds his horn. Drums strike up: a peal of ordnance. Enter
Soldiers.]
How say you, madam? are you now persuaded
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger: individual may profitably be considered as the ``atom'' of society.
And the solution of the problems of society and of civilization will
be brought about when we release the energies now latent and
undeveloped in the individual. Professor Edwin Grant Conklin
expresses the problem in another form; though his analogy, it seems to
me, is open to serious criticism. ``The freedom of the individual
man,'' he writes,[1] ``is to that of society as the freedom of the
single cell is to that of the human being. It is this large freedom
of society, rather than the freedom of the individual, which democracy
offers to the world, free societies, free states, free nations rather
than absolutely free individuals. In all organisms and in all social
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: And many, but never a feast like that of the folk of Vaiau.
All day long they ate with the resolute greed of brutes,
And turned from the pigs to the fish, and again from the fish to the fruits,
And emptied the vessels of sauce, and drank of the kava deep;
Till the young lay stupid as stones, and the strongest nodded to sleep.
Sleep that was mighty as death and blind as a moonless night
Tethered them hand and foot; and their souls were drowned, and the light
Was cloaked from their eyes. Senseless together, the old and the young,
The fighter deadly to smite and the prater cunning of tongue,
The woman wedded and fruitful, inured to the pangs of birth,
And the maid that knew not of kisses, blindly sprawled on the earth.
Ballads |
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 Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: broad shining river, and the long bridge, and the white houses
piled up the hill-side; and beyond, over Raleigh downs, the dear
old tower of Northam Church.
Alas! Northam was altogether a desert to him then; and Bideford, as
it turned out, hardly less so. For when he rode up to Sir
Richard's door, he found that the good knight was still in Ireland,
and Lady Grenville at Stow. Whereupon he rode back again down the
High Street to that same bow-windowed Ship Tavern where the
Brotherhood of the Rose made their vow, and settled himself in the
very room where they had supped.
"Ah! Mr. Leigh--Captain Leigh now, I beg pardon," quoth mine host.
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