| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has
conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses
of nations and crusades.
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising
the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of
production, and with them the whole relations of society.
Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form,
was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all
earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of
production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions,
everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois
The Communist Manifesto |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot: tells us the class of the person whom we are addressing,
unless indeed he belongs to the higher sections of the nobility.
There the difficulty is much greater. Even a Master of Arts
in our University of Wentbridge has been known to confuse a ten-sided
with a twelve-sided Polygon; and there is hardly a Doctor of Science
in or out of that famous University who could pretend
to decide promptly and unhesitatingly between a twenty-sided
and a twenty-four sided member of the Aristocracy.
Those of my readers who recall the extracts I gave above
from the Legislative code concerning Women, will readily perceive
that the process of introduction by contact requires
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Moran of the Lady Letty by Frank Norris: seen the fierce, quick leap of unleashed passions, and had felt
death swoop close at his nape and pass like a swift spurt of cold
air. City life, his old life, had no charm for him now. Wilbur
honestly believed that he was changed to his heart's core. He
thought that, like Moran, he was henceforth to be a sailor of the
sea, a rover, and he saw the rest of his existence passed with
her, aboard their faithful little schooner. They would have the
whole round world as their playground; they held the earth and the
great seas in fief; there was no one to let or to hinder. They
two belonged to each other. Once outside the Heads again, and
they swept the land of cities and of little things behind them,
|
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 Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: the dock, held by lines dark and slender, like the first threads of
a spider's web, extending from her bows and her quarters to the
mooring-posts on shore. There, graceful and still, like a bird
ready to spread its wings, she waited till, at the opening of the
gates, a tug or two would hurry in noisily, hovering round her with
an air of fuss and solicitude, and take her out into the river,
tending, shepherding her through open bridges, through dam-like
gates between the flat pier-heads, with a bit of green lawn
surrounded by gravel and a white signal-mast with yard and gaff,
flying a couple of dingy blue, red, or white flags.
This New South Dock (it was its official name), round which my
The Mirror of the Sea |
