| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson: lands of which are said to have received the name in the
twelfth century, lies within thirteen miles south-west of this
place. The lands of Stevenson in Lanarkshire first mentioned
in the next century, in the Ragman Roll, lie within twenty
miles east.
CHAPTER I
DOMESTIC ANNALS
IT is believed that in 1665, James Stevenson in Nether
Carsewell, parish of Neilston, county of Renfrew, and
presumably a tenant farmer, married one Jean Keir; and in
1675, without doubt, there was born to these two a son Robert,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Anabasis by Xenophon: Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford
Xenophon the Athenian was born 431 B.C. He was a
pupil of Socrates. He marched with the Spartans,
and was exiled from Athens. Sparta gave him land
and property in Scillus, where he lived for many
years before having to move once more, to settle
in Corinth. He died in 354 B.C.
The Anabasis is his story of the march to Persia
to aid Cyrus, who enlisted Greek help to try and
take the throne from Artaxerxes, and the ensuing
return of the Greeks, in which Xenophon played a
Anabasis |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: men, as well as children, rapturously devour stories in which truth
assumes the most grotesque forms. His passion for mystery, and the
credulity natural to the young, often led us to discuss Heaven and
Hell. Then Louis, by expounding Swedenborg, would try to make me share
in his beliefs concerning angels. In his least logical arguments there
were still amazing observations as to the powers of man, which gave
his words that color of truth without which nothing can be done in any
art. The romantic end he foresaw as the destiny of man was calculated
to flatter the yearning which tempts blameless imaginations to give
themselves up to beliefs. Is it not during the youth of a nation that
its dogmas and idols are conceived? And are not the supernatural
Louis Lambert |
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.: received a strange shock, and my arm fell to my side powerless.
And now, to add to my horror, the light began slowly to wane from
the candles,--they were not, as it were, extinguished, but their
flame seemed very gradually withdrawn; it was the same with the
fire,--the light was extracted from the fuel; in a few minutes the
room was in utter darkness. The dread that came over me, to be
thus in the dark with that dark Thing, whose power was so intensely
felt, brought a reaction of nerve. In fact, terror had reached
that climax, that either my senses must have deserted me, or I must
have burst through the spell. I did burst through it. I found
voice, though the voice was a shriek. I remember that I broke
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