| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: more certain than that we shall take any particular form of life.
7. When we speak of the immortality of the soul, we must ask further what
we mean by the word immortality. For of the duration of a living being in
countless ages we can form no conception; far less than a three years' old
child of the whole of life. The naked eye might as well try to see the
furthest star in the infinity of heaven. Whether time and space really
exist when we take away the limits of them may be doubted; at any rate the
thought of them when unlimited us so overwhelming to us as to lose all
distinctness. Philosophers have spoken of them as forms of the human mind,
but what is the mind without them? As then infinite time, or an existence
out of time, which are the only possible explanations of eternal duration,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Wheels of Chance by H. G. Wells: home--It's impossible."
Mr. Hoopdriver stroked his moustache. "It IS so," he said in a
meditative tone. "Things WILL go on," he said. The faint breath
of summer stirred the trees, and a bunch of dandelion puff lifted
among the meadowsweet and struck and broke into a dozen separate
threads against his knee. They flew on apart, and sank, as the
breeze fell, among the grass: some to germinate, some to perish.
His eye followed them until they had vanished.
"I can't go back to Surbiton," said the Young Lady in Grey.
"EIGH?" said Mr. Hoopdriver, catching at his moustache. This was
an unexpected development.
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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 Mistress Wilding by Rafael Sabatini: swinging in the air. "And what of this matter of the intercepted
letter from London to our Taunton friends?"
"I can't tell you. But of this I am sure, His Grace is incapable of
anything so rash. Certain is it that he'll not stir until Battiscomb
returns to Holland, and Battiscomb is still in Cheshire sounding the
Duke's friends."
"Yet were I you, I should not marry just at present."
Wilding smiled. "If you were me, you'd never marry at all."
"Faith, no!" said Trenchard. "I'd as soon play at `hot-cockles,'
or `Parson-has-lost-his-cloak.' `Tis a mort more amusing and the
sooner done with."
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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 Droll Stories, V. 1 by Honore de Balzac: an evening towards their hive. An old silk dyer, who lived in the Rue
St. Montfumier, and there possessed a house of scandalous
magnificence, coming from his place at La Grenadiere, situated on the
fair borders of St. Cyr, passed on horseback through Portillon in
order to gain the Bridge of Tours. By reason of the warmth of the
evening, he was seized with a wild desire on seeing the pretty
washerwoman sitting upon her door-step. Now as for a very long time he
had dreamed of this pretty maid, his resolution was taken to make her
his wife, and in a short time she was transformed from a washerwoman
into a dyer's wife, a good townswoman, with laces, fine linen, and
furniture to spare, and was happy in spite of the dyer, seeing that
Droll Stories, V. 1 |
