| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Heroes by Charles Kingsley: What if he will not receive me? And what have I done that he
should receive me? He has forgotten me ever since I was
born: why should he welcome me now?'
Then he thought a long while sadly; and at the last he cried
aloud, 'Yes! I will make him love me; for I will prove
myself worthy of his love. I will win honour and renown, and
do such deeds that AEgeus shall be proud of me, though he had
fifty other sons! Did not Heracles win himself honour,
though he was opprest, and the slave of Eurystheus? Did he
not kill all robbers and evil beasts, and drain great lakes
and marshes, breaking the hills through with his club?
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: desirous that they should know that all the other propositions, of the
truth of which they deem themselves perhaps more assured, as that we have
a body, and that there exist stars and an earth, and such like, are less
certain; for, although we have a moral assurance of these things, which is
so strong that there is an appearance of extravagance in doubting of their
existence, yet at the same time no one, unless his intellect is impaired,
can deny, when the question relates to a metaphysical certitude, that
there is sufficient reason to exclude entire assurance, in the observation
that when asleep we can in the same way imagine ourselves possessed of
another body and that we see other stars and another earth, when there is
nothing of the kind. For how do we know that the thoughts which occur in
Reason Discourse |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: life, will become an over-ridden hobby; and we shall presently be told
by our faddists that anything, even camp life, is better than school
life. Some blundering beginnings of this are already perceptible.
There is a movement for making our British children into priggish
little barefooted vagabonds, all talking like that born fool George
Borrow, and supposed to be splendidly healthy because they would die
if they slept in rooms with the windows shut, or perhaps even with a
roof over their heads. Still, this is a fairly healthy folly; and it
may do something to establish Mr Harold Cox's claim of a Right to Roam
as the basis of a much needed law compelling proprietors of land to
provide plenty of gates in their fences, and to leave them unlocked
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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 Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: possible pressure of population. Among other results of that long stress, I
understand that there will be a vast increase in human intelligence and
sympathy; and that this increases of intelligence will be effected at the
cost of human fertility. But this decline in reproductive power will not,
we are told, be sufficient to assure the very highest of social conditions:
it will only relieve that pressure of population which has been the main
cause of human suffering. The state of perfect social equilibrium will be
approached, but never quite reached, by mankind --
Unless there be discovered some means of solving economic problems, just
as social insects have solved them, by the suppression of sex-life.
Supposing that such a discovery were made, and that the human race should
Kwaidan |
