| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: which they designate with so fine a name is but apathy, or pride,
or despair, or parricide.
I revered our theology, and aspired as much as any one to reach heaven:
but being given assuredly to understand that the way is not less open to
the most ignorant than to the most learned, and that the revealed truths
which lead to heaven are above our comprehension, I did not presume to
subject them to the impotency of my reason; and I thought that in order
competently to undertake their examination, there was need of some special
help from heaven, and of being more than man.
Of philosophy I will say nothing, except that when I saw that it had been
cultivated for many ages by the most distinguished men, and that yet there
Reason Discourse |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: widow, poor soul, and I was already in her debt--to keep an old
box for me in which I had locked a few letters, keepsakes, and
the like. She lived in great fear of the Public Health and
Morality Inspectors, because she was sometimes too poor to pay
the customary tip to them, but at last she consented to put it in
a dark tiled place under the stairs, and then I went forth into
the world--to seek first the luck of a meal and then shelter.'
He wandered down into the thronging gayer parts of London, in
which a year or so ago he had been numbered among the spenders.
London, under the Visible Smoke Law, by which any production of
visible smoke with or without excuse was punishable by a fine,
The Last War: A World Set Free |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. Wells: flaw in it--if there is a flaw."
"There isn't one, " said Sir Richmond. "It is my chief
discovery about life. I began with the question of fuel and
the energy it affords mankind, and I have found that my
generalization applies to all human affairs. Human beings are
fools, weaklings, cowards, passionate idiots,--I grant you.
That is the brown cloak side of them, so to speak. But they
are not such fools and so forth that they can't do pretty
well materially if once we hammer out a sane collective
method of getting and using fuel. Which people generally will
understand--in the place of our present methods of snatch and
|
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 Walking by Henry David Thoreau: almost together. I know not what manner of stuff they are
of--sitting there now at three o'clock in the afternoon, as if it
were three o'clock in the morning. Bonaparte may talk of the
three-o'clock-in-the-morning courage, but it is nothing to the
courage which can sit down cheerfully at this hour in the
afternoon over against one's self whom you have known all the
morning, to starve out a garrison to whom you are bound by such
strong ties of sympathy. I wonder that about this time, or say
between four and five o'clock in the afternoon, too late for the
morning papers and too early for the evening ones, there is not a
general explosion heard up and down the street, scattering a
Walking |
