| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: on their occupations. When this earthly tabernacle is dissolved, no other
habitation or building can take them in: it is in the language of ideas
only that we speak of them.
First of all there is the thought of rest and freedom from pain; they have
gone home, as the common saying is, and the cares of this world touch them
no more. Secondly, we may imagine them as they were at their best and
brightest, humbly fulfilling their daily round of duties--selfless,
childlike, unaffected by the world; when the eye was single and the whole
body seemed to be full of light; when the mind was clear and saw into the
purposes of God. Thirdly, we may think of them as possessed by a great
love of God and man, working out His will at a further stage in the
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Shadow out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft: distant moonlit world outside. Some vague shred of caution warned
me that I should not let it out of my sight, lest I have no guide
for my return.
I now advanced toward the wall at my left, where
the traces of carving were plainest. The littered floor was nearly
as hard to traverse as the downward heap had been, but I managed
to pick my difficult way.
At one place I heaved aside some blocks
and locked away the detritus to see what the pavement was like,
and shuddered at the utter, fateful familiarity of the great octagonal
stones whose buckled surface still held roughly together.
Shadow out of Time |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Dracula by Bram Stoker: the receptivity of my mind with regard to some strange matter.
Do I read your lesson aright?"
"Ah, you are my favorite pupil still. It is worth to teach you. Now that you
are willing to understand, you have taken the first step to understand.
You think then that those so small holes in the children's throats were made
by the same that made the holes in Miss Lucy?"
"I suppose so."
He stood up and said solemnly, "Then you are wrong. Oh, would it were so!
But alas! No. It is worse, far, far worse."
"In God's name, Professor Van Helsing, what do you mean?" I cried.
He threw himself with a despairing gesture into a chair,
Dracula |
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 Hiero by Xenophon: changes of raiment, and the warm bath, and love and sleep"
(Butcher and Lang).
[6] Reading as vulg. {epithumias}. Breit. cf. "Mem." III. ix. 7; Plat.
"Phaed." 116 E, "he has eaten and drunk and enjoyed the society of
his beloved" (Jowett). See "Symp." the finale; or if, after Weiske
and Cobet, {euthumias}, transl. "to the general hilarity of myself
and the whole company" (cf. "Cyrop." I. iii. 12, IV. v. 7), but
this is surely a bathos rhetorically.
[7] Or, "a worse perplexity." See "Hell." VII. iii. 8.
For terror, you know, not only is a source of pain indwelling in the
breast itself, but, ever in close attendance, shadowing the path,[8]
|
