| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: Is not illusion a sort of night to the mind, which we people with
dreams? Illusion then unfolds its wings, it bears the soul aloft
to the world of fancies, a world full of voluptuous imaginings,
where the artist forgets the real world, yesterday and the
morrow, the future--everything down to its miseries, the good and
the evil alike.
At this magic hour a young painter, a man of talent, who saw in
art nothing but Art itself, was perched on a step-ladder which
helped him to work at a large high painting, now nearly finished.
Criticising himself, honestly admiring himself, floating on the
current of his thoughts, he then lost himself in one of those
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Common Sense by Thomas Paine: unmeaning names of parent and child.
To say, they will never attempt it again is idle and visionary,
we thought so at the repeal of the stamp-act, yet a year
or two undeceived us; as well may we suppose that nations,
which have been once defeated, will never renew the quarrel.
As to government matters, it is not in the power of Britain
to do this continent justice: The business of it will soon
be too weighty, and intricate, to be managed with any tolerable
degree of convenience, by a power so distant from us, and so
very ignorant of us; for if they cannot conquer us, they cannot
govern us. To be always running three or four thousand miles
Common Sense |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs: been pushing his boundaries farther and farther toward the
north.
"The yellow men from the east and north are contesting our
rights here now," said the colonel, "but we shall win--we
shall conquer the world, carrying Christianity to all the
benighted heathen of Europe, and Asia as well."
"You are a Christian people?" I asked.
He looked at me in surprise, nodding his head affirmatively.
"I am a Christian," I said. "My people are the most
powerful on earth."
He smiled, and shook his head indulgently, as a father to a
Lost Continent |
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 Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: mentioning the Unseen world, except for those hortatory purposes for
which it used to be employed by Nelson's veterans. But, as Ptolemy
felt, people (women especially) must have something wherein to believe.
The "Religious Sentiment" in man must be satisfied. But, how to do it?
How to find a deity who would meet the aspirations of conquerors as well
as conquered--of his most irreligious Macedonians, as well as of his
most religious Egyptians? It was a great problem: but Ptolemy solved
it. He seems to have taken the same method which Brindley the engineer
used in his perplexities, for he went to bed. And there he had a dream:
How the foreign god Serapis, of Pontus (somewhere near this present
hapless Sinope), appeared to him, and expressed his wish to come to
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