| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain: responsibility is individual, not communal. From this day forth
each and every one of you is in his own person its special guardian,
and individually responsible that no harm shall come to it. Do you-
-does each of you--accept this great trust? [Tumultuous assent.]
Then all is well. Transmit it to your children and to your
children's children. To-day your purity is beyond reproach--see to
it that it shall remain so. To-day there is not a person in your
community who could be beguiled to touch a penny not his own--see to
it that you abide in this grace. ["We will! we will!"] This is not
the place to make comparisons between ourselves and other
communities--some of them ungracious towards us; they have their
The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu: belonged to a consciousness older than the Christian, which I
realised, wondered at, and admired, in her passionate
tranquillity of mind, before which everything mean and trivial
and temporary caught fire and burnt away in smoke. Her body was
never without suffering, or her heart without conflict; but
neither the body's weakness nor the heart's violence could
disturb that fixed contemplation, as of Buddha on his
lotus-throne.
And along with this wisdom, as of age or of the age of a race,
there was what I can hardly call less than an agony of sensation.
Pain or pleasure transported her, and the whole of pain or
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