| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: Gustavus Adolphus and his Swedes passed through more than once,
as is duly recorded in archives still preserved, for we are on what was
then the high-road between Sweden and Brandenburg the unfortunate.
The Lion of the North was no doubt an estimable <4> person and acted wholly
up to his convictions, but he must have sadly upset the peaceful nuns,
who were not without convictions of their own, sending them out on to
the wide, empty plain to piteously seek some life to replace the life
of silence here.
From nearly all the windows of the house I can look out
across the plain, with no obstacle in the shape of a hill,
right away to a blue line of distant forest, and on the west
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Professor by Charlotte Bronte: As true, as deep a love?
"O God, watch o'er my foster child!
O guard her gentle head!
When minds are high and tempests wild
Protection round her spread!
"They call again; leave then my breast;
Quit thy true shelter, Jane;
But when deceived, repulsed, opprest,
Come home to me again! "
I read--then dreamily made marks on the margin with my pencil;
thinking all the while of other things; thinking that "Jane" was
The Professor |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: knowledge!) as an instrument. But whoever considers the
fundamental impulses of man with a view to determining how far
they may have here acted as INSPIRING GENII (or as demons and
cobolds), will find that they have all practiced philosophy at
one time or another, and that each one of them would have been
only too glad to look upon itself as the ultimate end of
existence and the legitimate LORD over all the other impulses.
For every impulse is imperious, and as SUCH, attempts to
philosophize. To be sure, in the case of scholars, in the case of
really scientific men, it may be otherwise--"better," if you
will; there there may really be such a thing as an "impulse to
Beyond Good and Evil |
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 Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: understand it."
My arms drooped again as I finished, and my eyes sought Alan's.
His were full of tears, but there was almost a smile quivering at
the corners of his lips as he replied: "When you have found an
answer to that question, Evie, come and tell me and mankind at
large: it will be news to us all." Then he continued--"But, after
all, the earth is beautiful, and the sun does shine: we have our
own happiness to rejoice in, our own sorrows to bear, the suffering
that is near to us to grapple with. For the rest, for this
blackness of evil which surrounds us, and which we can do nothing
to lighten, it will soon, thank God, become vague and far off to
|
