| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: engine. But they could see nothing of the sort. They were not
yet beginning to think of seeing things; their metallurgy was all
too poor to make such engines even had they thought of them. For
a time they could not make instruments sound enough to stand this
new force even for so rough a purpose as hurling a missile. Their
first guns had barrels of coopered timber, and the world waited
for more than five hundred years before the explosive engine
came.
Even when the seekers found, it was at first a long journey
before the world could use their findings for any but the
roughest, most obvious purposes. If man in general was not still
 The Last War: A World Set Free |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: was to Italy, Weimar to Germany,--what Munich is trying to be to-day."
"Was Provins ever a capital?" asked Rogron.
"Why! where do you come from?" exclaimed the archaeologist. "Don't you
know," he added, striking the ground of the Upper town where they
stood with his cane, "don't you know that the whole of this part of
Provins is built on catacombs?"
"Catacombs?"
"Yes, catacombs, the extent and height of which are yet undiscovered.
They are like the naves of cathedrals, and there are pillars in them."
"Monsieur is writing a great archaeological work to explain these
strange constructions," interposed Monsieur Martener, seeing that the
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