| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The People That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: that the Galus country was still higher and considerably colder,
which accounted for the scarcity of reptiles. The change in
form and kinds of the lower animals was even more marked than
the evolutionary stages of man. The diminutive ecca, or
small horse, became a rough-coated and sturdy little pony in
the Kro-lu country. I saw a greater number of small lions
and tigers, though many of the huge ones still persisted,
while the woolly mammoth was more in evidence, as were several
varieties of the Labyrinthadonta. These creatures, from which
God save me, I should have expected to find further south; but
for some unaccountable reason they gain their greatest bulk in
The People That Time Forgot |
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 Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: physician of their best friends.
"My dear fellow, those women of whom you say, 'They are angels!' I--
I--have seen stripped of the little grimaces under which they hide
their soul, as well as of the frippery under which they disguise their
defects--without manners and without stays; they are not beautiful.
"We saw a great deal of mud, a great deal of dirt, under the waters of
the world when we were aground for a time on the shoals of the Maison
Vauquer.--What we saw there was nothing. Since I have gone into high
society, I have seen monsters dressed in satin, Michonneaus in white
gloves, Poirets bedizened with orders, fine gentlemen doing more
usurious business than old Gobseck! To the shame of mankind, when I
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