| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: it all, the trumpets might sound by the hour and no one would
follow them into battle - the blue-peter might fly at the
truck, but who would climb into a sea-going ship? Think (if
these philosophers were right) with what a preparation of
spirit we should affront the daily peril of the dinner-table:
a deadlier spot than any battle-field in history, where the
far greater proportion of our ancestors have miserably left
their bones! What woman would ever be lured into marriage, so
much more dangerous than the wildest sea? And what would it
be to grow old? For, after a certain distance, every step we
take in life we find the ice growing thinner below our feet,
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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 Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells: and saw close to me a dim pinkish thing, looking more like a flayed
child than anything else in the world. The creature had exactly
the mild but repulsive features of a sloth, the same low forehead
and slow gestures.
As the first shock of the change of light passed, I saw about me
more distinctly. The little sloth-like creature was standing and
staring at me. My conductor had vanished. The place was a narrow
passage between high walls of lava, a crack in the knotted rock,
and on either side interwoven heaps of sea-mat, palm-fans, and reeds
leaning against the rock formed rough and impenetrably dark dens.
The winding way up the ravine between these was scarcely three yards wide,
The Island of Doctor Moreau |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: their toils. And when she had herself nursed them and brought them up to
manhood, she gave them Gods to be their rulers and teachers, whose names
are well known, and need not now be repeated. They are the Gods who first
ordered our lives, and instructed us in the arts for the supply of our
daily needs, and taught us the acquisition and use of arms for the defence
of the country.
Thus born into the world and thus educated, the ancestors of the departed
lived and made themselves a government, which I ought briefly to
commemorate. For government is the nurture of man, and the government of
good men is good, and of bad men bad. And I must show that our ancestors
were trained under a good government, and for this reason they were good,
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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 Georgics by Virgil: And Dryad-maids together; your gifts I sing.
And thou, for whose delight the war-horse first
Sprang from earth's womb at thy great trident's stroke,
Neptune; and haunter of the groves, for whom
Three hundred snow-white heifers browse the brakes,
The fertile brakes of Ceos; and clothed in power,
Thy native forest and Lycean lawns,
Pan, shepherd-god, forsaking, as the love
Of thine own Maenalus constrains thee, hear
And help, O lord of Tegea! And thou, too,
Minerva, from whose hand the olive sprung;
Georgics |
