| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: they have, upon the darkness of their subjects. They are at first,
probably, civilisers, not conquerors. For, if tradition is worth
anything--and we have nothing else to go upon--they are at first few
in number. They come as settlers, or even as single sages. It is,
in all tradition, not the many who influence the few, but the few
who influence the many.
So aristocracies, in the true sense, are formed.
But the higher calling is soon forgotten. The purer light is soon
darkened in pride and selfishness, luxury and lust; as in Genesis,
the sons of God see the daughters of men, that they are fair; and
they take them wives of all that they choose. And so a mixed race
|
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 Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: of the equator one whit less warlike than their cold, cruel cousins
of the temperate zone. There were many times when either side
might have withdrawn without dishonor and thus ended hostilities,
but from the mad abandon with which each invariably renewed
hostilities I soon came to believe that what need not have been
more than a trifling skirmish would end only with the complete
extermination of one force or the other.
With the joy of battle once roused within me, I took keen delight
in the fray, and that my fighting was noted by the Kaolians was
often evidenced by the shouts of applause directed at me.
The Warlord of Mars |
