| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: the democratic passions of his contemporaries in all that was not
directly and immediately hostile to his own power. He was
willing to allow some popular principles to regulate the
distribution of property and the government of families, provided
they were not to be introduced into the administration of public
affairs. Whilst the torrent of democracy overwhelmed the civil
laws of the country, he hoped to find an easy shelter behind its
political institutions. This policy was at once both adroit and
selfish; but a compromise of this kind could not last; for in the
end political institutions never fail to become the image and
expression of civil society; and in this sense it may be said
|
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 Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: Now these outrages were remembered, now when the arm of the queen
of the valley was withered, the children of those whom she had
slain rose up to slay her and to drag HER children to their altars.
By the month of May, strive as we would, and never was a more
gallant fight made, all our allies were crushed or had deserted us,
and the siege of the city began. It began by land and by water,
for with incredible resource Cortes caused thirteen brigantines of
war to be constructed in Tlascala, and conveyed in pieces for
twenty leagues across the mountains to his camp, whence they were
floated into the lake through a canal, which was hollowed out by
the labour of ten thousand Indians, who worked at it without cease
Montezuma's Daughter |
