| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Proposed Roads To Freedom by Bertrand Russell: German imperialism. Most of his writing was
done in a hurry in the interval between two insurrections.
There is something of Anarchism in his lack
of literary order. His best-known work is a fragment
entitled by its editors ``God and the State.''[16]
In this work he represents belief in God and belief in
the State as the two great obstacles to human liberty.
A typical passage will serve to illustrate its style.
[15] ``Marx, as a thinker, is on the right road. He has established
as a principle that all the evolutions, political, religious,
and juridical, in history are, not the causes, but the effects of
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Betty Zane by Zane Grey: the wall. The black barrel of his rifle lay in the hollow of his arm. The
hunter was gravely contemplating the members of the bridal party who were
dancing in front of him. When the dance ended Lydia and Betty stopped before
Wetzel and Betty said: "Lew, aren't you going to ask us to dance?"
The hunter looked down into the happy, gleaming faces, and smiling in his half
sad way, answered: "Every man to his gifts."
"But you can dance. I want you to put aside your gun long enough to dance with
me. If I waited for you to ask me, I fear I should have to wait a long time.
Come, Lew, here I am asking you, and I know the other men are dying to dance
with me," said Betty, coaxingly, in a roguish voice.
Wetzel never refused a request of Betty's, and so, laying aside his weapons,
Betty Zane |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Dracula by Bram Stoker: in the mortuary to await inquest.
Already the sudden storm is passing,and its fierceness is abating.
Crowds are scattering backward, and the sky is beginning to redden
over the Yorkshire wolds.
I shall send, in time for your next issue, further details of the derelict
ship which found her way so miraculously into harbour in the storm.
9 August.--The sequel to the strange arrival of the derelict in
the storm last night is almost more startling than the thing itself.
It turns out that the schooner is Russian from Varna, and is called
the Demeter. She is almost entirely in ballast of silver sand,
with only a small amount of cargo, a number of great wooden boxes
Dracula |
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 Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: interest.
In the course of the first few months after coming to Vendome, Louis
became the victim of a malady which, though the symptoms were
invisible to the eye of our superiors, considerably interfered with
the exercise of his remarkable gifts. Accustomed to live in the open
air, and to the freedom of a purely haphazard education, happy in the
tender care of an old man who was devoted to him, used to meditating
in the sunshine, he found it very hard to submit to college rules, to
walk in the ranks, to live within the four walls of a room where
eighty boys were sitting in silence on wooden forms each in front of
his desk. His senses were developed to such perfection as gave them
Louis Lambert |
