| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: live with each in turn for three months in the year. As he left the
oldest to go to the home of a younger brother, one of his friends
asked him, 'Well, are you satisfied with the arrangement?' 'Faith!
yes,' the old man answered; 'they have treated me as if I had been
their own child.' That answer of his seemed so remarkable to an
officer then stationed at Grenoble, that he repeated it in more than
one Parisian salon. That officer was the celebrated moralist
Vauvenargues, and in this way the beautiful saying came to the
knowledge of another writer named Chamfort. Ah! still more forcible
phrases are often struck out among us, but they lack a historian
worthy of them."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: floor, and found the house of great extent; the kitchen
offices commodious and well appointed; the rooms many and
large; and the drawing-room, in particular, an apartment of
princely size and tasteful decoration. Although the day
without was warm, genial, and sunny, with a ruffling wind
from the quarter of Torquay, a chill, as it were, of
suspended animation inhabited the house. Dust and shadows
met the eye; and but for the ominous procession of the
echoes, and the rumour of the wind among the garden trees,
the ear of the young man was stretched in vain.
Behind the dining-room, that pleasant library, referred to by
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from In Darkest England and The Way Out by General William Booth: criminals) 78,966--and we have an army of nearly two million:
belonging to the submerged classes. To this there must be added at the
very least, another million, representing those dependent upon the
criminal, lunatic and other classes, not enumerated here, and the more
or less helpless of the class immediately above the houseless and
starving. This brings my total to three millions, or, to put it
roughly to one-tenth of the population. According to Lord Brabazon and
Mr. Samuel Smith, "between two and three millions of our population
are always pauperised and degraded." Mr. Chamberlain says there is a
"population equal to that of the metropolis,--that is, between four
and five millions--"which has remained constantly in a state of
In Darkest England and The Way Out |
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 Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: all the meat into the house; he stayed in the house and lit a
fire. It hailed and rained. The cannibal cried on the top of
the house; he was struck with the hailstones, and died there
on the house. It cleared. Uthlakanyana went out and said,
'Uncle, just come down, and come to me. It has become clear.
It no longer rains, and there is no more hail, neither is
there any more lightning. Why are you silent?' So
Uthlakanyana ate his cow alone, until he had finished it. He
then went on his way."[144]
[144] Callaway, Zulu Nursery Tales, pp. 27-30.
In another Zulu legend, a girl is stolen by cannibals, and
Myths and Myth-Makers |
