| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Works of Samuel Johnson by Samuel Johnson: able to fill desire or imagination with immediate
enjoyment, and we are forced to supply its
deficiencies by recollection or anticipation.
Every one has so often detected the fallaciousness
of hope, and the inconvenience of teaching
himself to expect what a thousand accidents may
preclude, that, when time has abated the confidence
with which youth rushes out to take possession of
the world, we endeavour, or wish, to find entertainment
in the review of life, and to repose upon
real facts, and certain experience. This is perhaps
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: harmony.
"If you would teach your feet to tread the Path to heaven, know that
the way is hard at first," said the weary sufferer; "God wills that
you shall seek Him for Himself. In that sense, He is jealous; He
demands your whole self. But when you have given Him yourself, never,
never will He abandon you. I leave with you the keys of the kingdom of
His Light, where evermore you shall dwell in the bosom of the Father,
in the heart of the Bridegroom. No sentinels guard the approaches, you
may enter where you will; His palaces, His treasures, His sceptre, all
are free. 'Take them!' He says. But--you must WILL to go there. Like
one preparing for a journey, a man must leave his home, renounce his
Seraphita |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: such-like, bandied about again just now, as if they represented
facts. If there remain in this kingdom any facts which correspond
to those words, let them be abolished as speedily as possible: but
that such do remain was not the opinion of the master of modern
political philosophy, M. de Tocqueville.
He expresses his surprise "that the fact which distinguishes England
from all other modern nations, and which alone can throw light on
her peculiarities, . . . has not attracted more attention, . . . and
that habit has rendered it, as it were, imperceptible to the English
themselves--that England was the only country in which the system of
caste had been not only modified, but effectually destroyed. The
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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 Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: against some wicked black cliffs in a heavy sleet-storm with
lightning and thunder. Yet as he pulled out against the gale he
could see that even there had once been a seal nursery. And it
was so in all the other islands that he visited.
Limmershin gave a long list of them, for he said that Kotick
spent five seasons exploring, with a four months' rest each year
at Novastoshnah, when the holluschickie used to make fun of him
and his imaginary islands. He went to the Gallapagos, a horrid
dry place on the Equator, where he was nearly baked to death; he
went to the Georgia Islands, the Orkneys, Emerald Island, Little
Nightingale Island, Gough's Island, Bouvet's Island, the Crossets,
The Jungle Book |
