| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells: men like yourselves, whom you have infected with some bestial taint,--
men whom you have enslaved, and whom you still fear.
"You who listen," I cried, pointing now to Moreau and shouting past
him to the Beast Men,--" You who listen! Do you not see these men
still fear you, go in dread of you? Why, then, do you fear them?
You are many--"
"For God's sake," cried Montgomery, "stop that, Prendick!"
"Prendick!" cried Moreau.
They both shouted together, as if to drown my voice; and behind
them lowered the staring faces of the Beast Men, wondering,
their deformed hands hanging down, their shoulders hunched up.
The Island of Doctor Moreau |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: come to take her, and that is why she yelled so. Well, I got her down
to the waggon, and gave her a 'tot' of Cape smoke, and then, as soon as
it was ready, poured about a pint of beef-tea down her throat, made from
the flesh of a blue vilderbeeste I had killed the day before, and after
that she brightened up wonderfully. She could talk Zulu--indeed, it
turned out that she had run away from Zululand in T'Chaka's time--and
she told me that all the people whom I had seen had died of fever. When
they had died the other inhabitants of the kraal had taken the cattle
and gone away, leaving the poor old woman, who was helpless from age and
infirmity, to perish of starvation or disease, as the case might be.
She had been sitting there for three days among the bodies when I found
Long Odds |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther: love Me and keep My commandments.
Although these words relate to all the commandments (as we shall
hereafter learn), yet they are joined to this chief commandment
because it is of first importance that men have a right head; for
where the head is right, the whole life must be right, and vice versa.
Learn, therefore, from these words how angry God is with those who
trust in anything but Him, and again, how good and gracious He is to
those who trust and believe in Him alone with the whole heart; so that
His anger does not cease until the fourth generation, while, on the
other hand, His blessing and goodness extend to many thousands lest you
live in such security and commit yourself to chance, as men of brutal
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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 An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: dozen grimy workmen lent us a hand. They refused any reward; and,
what is much better, refused it handsomely, without conveying any
sense of insult. 'It is a way we have in our countryside,' said
they. And a very becoming way it is. In Scotland, where also you
will get services for nothing, the good people reject your money as
if you had been trying to corrupt a voter. When people take the
trouble to do dignified acts, it is worth while to take a little
more, and allow the dignity to be common to all concerned. But in
our brave Saxon countries, where we plod threescore years and ten
in the mud, and the wind keeps singing in our ears from birth to
burial, we do our good and bad with a high hand and almost
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