| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: does the soul cry aloud. Only perhaps for a little human woman full of
sin, that it once loved.
"Change is death, change is death!" he cried. "I want no angel, only she;
no holier and no better, with all her sins upon her, so give her me or give
me nothing!"
And, truly, does not the heart love its own with the strongest passion for
their very frailties? Heaven might keep its angels if men were but left to
men.
"Change is death," he cried, "change is death! Who dares to say the body
never dies, because it turns again to grass and flowers? And yet they dare
to say the spirit never dies, because in space some strange unearthly being
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: water out of the boat.--And the rest of you," he went on, addressing
the sailors, "pull with all your might! Now is the time; in the name
of the devil who is leaving you in this world, be your own Providence!
Every one knows that the channel is fearfully dangerous; I have been
to and fro across it these thirty years. Am I facing a storm for the
first time to-night?"
He stood at the helm, and looked, as before, at his boat and at the
sea and sky in turn.
"The skipper always laughs at everything," muttered Thomas.
"Will God leave us to perish along with those wretched creatures?"
asked the haughty damsel of the handsome cavalier.
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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 The Symposium by Xenophon: the arbitrament of Cleinias?
Then Socrates: Will you never tire of repeating that one name? It is
Cleinias here, there, and everywhere with you.
Crit. And if his name died on my lips, think you my mind would less
recall his memory? Know you not, I bear so clear an image of him in my
soul, that had I the sculptor's or the limner's skill, I might portray
his features as exactly from this image of the mind as from
contemplation of his actual self.
But Socrates broke in: Pray, why then, if you bear about this lively
image, why do you give me so much trouble, dragging me to this and
that place, where you hope to see him?
The Symposium |
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 Proposed Roads To Freedom by Bertrand Russell: having much bearing upon the practical truth or
falsehood of Socialism; it has therefore seemed impossible
within the limits of the present volume. To
my mind the best parts of the book are those which
deal with economic facts, of which Marx's knowledge
was encyclopaedic. It was by these facts that
he hoped to instil into his disciples that firm and
undying hatred that should make them soldiers to
the death in the class war. The facts which he
accumulates are such as are practically unknown to
the vast majority of those who live comfortable lives.
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