| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: indeed than it had been in the bloom of youth. She had reached the
foot of the hill and was turning towards the little garden gate,
when I came forward from the shadow of the trees, and stood before
her. Back she started with a cry of fear, then grew silent and
gazed into my face.
'So changed,' she murmured; 'can it be the same? Thomas, is it you
come back to me from the dead, or is this but a vision?' and slowly
and doubtingly the dream wraith stretched out her arms as though to
clasp me.
Then I awoke. I awoke and lo! before me stood a fair woman clothed
in white, on whom the moonlight shone as in my dream, and her arms
 Montezuma's Daughter |
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 Phaedo by Plato: quit this world are comforted with the hope 'That they will see and know
their friends in heaven.' But it is better to leave them in the hands of
God and to be assured that 'no evil shall touch them.' There are others
again to whom the belief in a divine personality has ceased to have any
longer a meaning; yet they are satisfied that the end of all is not here,
but that something still remains to us, 'and some better thing for the good
than for the evil.' They are persuaded, in spite of their theological
nihilism, that the ideas of justice and truth and holiness and love are
realities. They cherish an enthusiastic devotion to the first principles
of morality. Through these they see, or seem to see, darkly, and in a
figure, that the soul is immortal.
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