| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: Erichthon, Triptolemus, and Sesostris--rewarded for ever for having
done their duty, each according to his light, to the flocks which
the gods had committed to their care. It is something to have
spoken to a prince, in such an age, without servility, and without
etiquette, of the frailties and the dangers which beset arbitrary
rulers; to have told him that royalty, "when assumed to content
oneself, is a monstrous tyranny; when assumed to fulfil its duties,
and to conduct an innumerable people as a father conducts his
children, a crushing slavery, which demands an heroic courage and
patience."
Let us honour the courtier who dared speak such truths; and still
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place
for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . .
we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power
to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember,
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished
work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
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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 Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: much, or too little; you have gone too far, or not far enough.
Either let us drop this correspondence, or, if you continue it,
tell me more than in the letter you have now written me.
But, mademoiselle, if you are young, if you are beautiful, if you
have a home, a family, if in your heart you have the precious
ointment, the spikenard, to pour out, as did Magdalene on the feet
of Jesus, let yourself be won by a man worthy of you; become what
every pure young girl should be,--a good woman, the virtuous
mother of a family. A poet is the saddest conquest that a girl can
make; he is full of vanity, full of angles that will sharply wound
a woman's proper pride, and kill a tenderness which has no
Modeste Mignon |
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 Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: 'One thinks of him now as one thinks of the megatherium,' said
one of the young men.
'From first to last mankind made three million big guns and a
hundred thousand complicated great ships for no other purpose but
war.'
'Were there no sane men in those days,' asked the young man, 'to
stand against that idolatry?'
'In a state of despair,' said Edith Haydon.
'He is so far off--and there are men alive still who were alive
when Bismarck died!' . . . said the young man....
Section 5
The Last War: A World Set Free |
