| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: shoulder and said, 'You must be a Catholic and come to heaven.'
But I was now among a different sect of orthodox. These two men
were bitter and upright and narrow, like the worst of Scotsmen, and
indeed, upon my heart, I fancy they were worse. The priest snorted
aloud like a battle-horse.
'ET VOUS PRETENDEZ MOURIR DANS CETTE ESPECE DE CROYANCE?' he
demanded; and there is no type used by mortal printers large enough
to qualify his accent.
I humbly indicated that I had no design of changing.
But he could not away with such a monstrous attitude. 'No, no,' he
cried; 'you must change. You have come here, God has led you here,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: for the foundations of the world; suppose that such a man saw
uttermost space lie open before the current, and words of men
flash forth to the sun and beyond the sun into the systems
beyond, and the voice of articulate-speaking men echo in the
waste void that bounds our thought. As analogies go, that is a
pretty good analogy of what I have done; you can understand now
a little of what I felt as I stood here one evening; it was a
summer evening, and the valley looked much as it does now; I
stood here, and saw before me the unutterable, the unthinkable
gulf that yawns profound between two worlds, the world of matter
and the world of spirit; I saw the great empty deep stretch dim
The Great God Pan |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Finished by H. Rider Haggard: thinned, and I saw the circle of those savage men seated beneath,
and in their centre a great chief wearing a leopard's skin cloak
who I guessed was the king. You I did not see, Mr. Quatermain,
because you were behind a tree, yet I felt that you were there, a
friend among all those foes. I stood still, as I had been taught
to do, and heard the murmur of astonishment and caught the gleam
of the moonlight from the white feathers that were sewn upon my
robe.
"Then I heard also the voice of Zikali speaking from beneath. He
called on you to come out to shoot at me, and the man whom I took
to be the king, ordered you to obey. You appeared from behind
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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 Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: jolly companion, not more prudish than a trooper, as frank and
outspoken--not as a sailor, for nowadays sailors are wily
diplomates--but as an honest man who has nothing in his life to
hide, he walked with his head erect, and a mind content. In
short, to put the facts into a word, Horace was the Pylades of
more than one Orestes--creditors being regarded as the nearest
modern equivalent to the Furies of the ancients.
He carried his poverty with the cheerfulness which is perhaps one
of the chief elements of courage, and, like all people who have
nothing, he made very few debts. As sober as a camel and active
as a stag, he was steadfast in his ideas and his conduct.
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