| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Finished by H. Rider Haggard: where the natives tried to murder us."
"Ah!" he replied without surprise. "I warned you the trip was
dangerous, did I not? Well, come on home where my partner, Rodd,
who luckily has had medical experience, will attend to you. Mr.
Quatermain can tell me the story as we go."
So we went on up the long slope, I relating our adventures, to
which Mr. Marnham listened without comment.
"I expect that the Kaffirs will have looted the wagon and be on
the way home with your oxen by now," he said when I had finished.
"Are you not afraid that they will follow us here?" I asked.
"Oh no, Mr. Quatermain. We do business with these people, also
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: their heads, having black shields in their left hands, and in their
right, one an axe and one a club; while about their shoulders were
bound wolf-skins. They ran low, neck and neck, with outstretched
shields and heads held forward, as a buck runs when he is hard pressed
by dogs, and no such running had been seen in the kraal Umgugundhlovu
as the running of the Wolf-Brethren. Half across the space they ran,
and halted suddenly, and, as they halted, the dead ashes of the fire
flew up before their feet in a little cloud.
"By my head! look, these come armed before me!" said Dingaan,
frowning, "and to do this is death. Now say who is that man, great and
fierce, who bears an axe aloft? Did I not know him dead I should say
Nada the Lily |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Shadow out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft: Great Race had sent its foremost minds into the future to escape
the creeping horror. Flatness and exuberant green life were always
the keynote of the scene. Hills were low and sparse, and usually
displayed signs of volcanic forces.
Of the animals I saw, I
could write volumes. All were wild; for the Great Race's mechanised
culture had long since done away with domestic beasts, while food
was wholly vegetable or synthetic. Clumsy reptiles of great bulk
floundered in steaming morasses, fluttered in the heavy air, or
spouted in the seas and lakes; and among these I fancied I could
vaguely recognise lesser, archaic prototypes of many forms - dinosaurs,
Shadow out of Time |
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 Protagoras by Plato: Sophists, who are their interpreters, and whom he delights to identify with
them. (5) The depreciating spirit in which Socrates speaks of the
introduction of the poets as a substitute for original conversation, which
is intended to contrast with Protagoras' exaltation of the study of them--
this again is hardly consistent with the serious defence of Simonides. (6)
the marked approval of Hippias, who is supposed at once to catch the
familiar sound, just as in the previous conversation Prodicus is
represented as ready to accept any distinctions of language however absurd.
At the same time Hippias is desirous of substituting a new interpretation
of his own; as if the words might really be made to mean anything, and were
only to be regarded as affording a field for the ingenuity of the
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