| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: debauchery and contempt of sacred things, all the sanctions of
morality were destroyed and the confusion between right and wrong
became hopeless. The world has probably never seen a society more
vile than that of Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries. The brilliant pages of Froissart fascinate us with
their pictures of the artificial courtesies of chivalry; the
mystic reveries of Rysbroek and of Tauler show us that spiritual
life survived in some rare souls, but the mass of the population
was plunged into the depths of sensuality and the most brutal
oblivion of the moral law. For this Alvaro Pelayo tells us that
the priesthood were accountable, and that, in comparison with
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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 Mysterious Island by Jules Verne: Cyrus Harding that it was beginning to increase, he asked, "What o'clock is
it?"
"One minute past five," replied Gideon Spilett directly. They had now
only to calculate the operation. Nothing could be easier. It could be seen
that there existed, in round numbers, a difference of five hours between
the meridian of Washington and that of Lincoln Island, that is to say, it
was midday in Lincoln Island when it was already five o'clock in the
evening in Washington. Now the sun, in its apparent movement round the
earth, traverses one degree in four minutes, or fifteen degrees an hour.
Fifteen degrees multiplied by five hours give seventy-five degrees.
Then, since Washington is 770ø 3' 11" as much as to say seventy-seven
The Mysterious Island |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: at the island, which was already three parts sunk under the sea,
and he seemed to consider ripely his position.
"Look!" says he, "there is Molokai already far behind us, and Maui
like a cloud; and by the bearing of these three stars I know I am
come where I desire. This part of the sea is called the Sea of the
Dead. It is in this place extraordinarily deep, and the floor is
all covered with the bones of men, and in the holes of this part
gods and goblins keep their habitation. The flow of the sea is to
the north, stronger than a shark can swim, and any man who shall
here be thrown out of a ship it bears away like a wild horse into
the uttermost ocean. Presently he is spent and goes down, and his
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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 Enemies of Books by William Blades: excellent "Encyclopaedia of Printing,"[1] edited and printed by Ringwalt,
at Philadelphia, not only that the bookworm is a stranger there,
for personally he is unknown to most of us, but that his slightest
ravages are looked upon as both curious and rare. After quoting Dibdin,
with the addition of a few flights of imagination of his own,
Ringwalt states that this "paper-eating moth is supposed to have been
introduced into England in hogsleather binding from Holland." He then
ends with what, to anyone who has seen the ravages of the worm in hundreds
of books, must be charming in its native simplicity. "There is now,"
he states, evidently quoting it as a great curiosity, "there is now,
in a private library in Philadelphia, a book perforated by this insect."
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