| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: our societies. It is the swimmer who first leaps into the frozen stream
who is cut sharpest by the ice; those who follow him find it broken, and
the last find it gone. It is the man or woman who first treads down the
path which the bulk of humanity will ultimately follow, who must find
themselves at last in solitudes where the silence is deadly. The fact that
any course of human action leading to adjustment, leads also to immediate
suffering, by dividing the individual from the bulk of his fellows; is no
argument against it; that solitude and suffering is the crown of thorns
which marks the kingship of earth's Messiahs: it is the mark of the
leader.
Thus, social disco-ordination, and subjective conflict and suffering,
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: handsome offer. A hundred francs per month! Think of it! After all, a
romance in a drawer is not eating its head off like a horse in a
stable, nor will it find you in victuals either, and that's a fact."
Lucien snatched up his manuscript and dashed it on the floor.
"I would rather burn it, sir!" he exclaimed.
"You have a poet's head," returned his senior.
Lucien devoured his bread and supped his bowl of milk, then he went
downstairs. His room was not large enough for him; he was turning
round and round in it like a lion in a cage at the Jardin des Plantes.
At the Bibliotheque Saint-Genevieve, whither Lucien was going, he had
come to know a stranger by sight; a young man of five-and-twenty or
|
