| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: Adam and Eve, or Cape Jack and Jane, and distinguished by two
colossal figures, the gross statuary of nature. These we were to
find; for these we craned and stared, focused glasses, and wrangled
over charts; and the sun was overhead and the land close ahead
before we found them. To a ship approaching, like the CASCO, from
the north, they proved indeed the least conspicuous features of a
striking coast; the surf flying high above its base; strange,
austere, and feathered mountains rising behind; and Jack and Jane,
or Adam and Eve, impending like a pair of warts above the breakers.
Thence we bore away along shore. On our port beam we might hear
the explosions of the surf; a few birds flew fishing under the
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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 Odyssey by Homer: getting home. Still, let us lay our heads together and see how
we can help him to return; Neptune will then be pacified, for if
we are all of a mind he can hardly stand out against us."
And Minerva said, "Father, son of Saturn, King of kings, if,
then, the gods now mean that Ulysses should get home, we should
first send Mercury to the Ogygian island to tell Calypso that we
have made up our minds and that he is to return. In the meantime
I will go to Ithaca, to put heart into Ulysses' son Telemachus;
I will embolden him to call the Achaeans in assembly, and speak
out to the suitors of his mother Penelope, who persist in eating
up any number of his sheep and oxen; I will also conduct him to
The Odyssey |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: unnecessary amount of scrunching. It was a firm, juicy
apple, and it gave forth a cracking sound when his teeth met
in its white meat. Fanny, after regarding him with gloomy
superiority, went to bed.
She had willed to sleep late, for gastronomic reasons, but
the mental command disobeyed itself, and she woke early,
with a heavy feeling. Early as it was, Molly Brandeis had
tiptoed in still earlier to look at her strange little
daughter. She sometimes did that on Saturday mornings when
she left early for the store and Fanny slept late. This
morning Fanny's black hair was spread over the pillow as she
Fanny Herself |
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 The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: proletarian alms-bag in front for a banner. But the people, so
often as it joined them, saw on their hindquarters the old feudal
coats of arms, and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter.
One section of the French Legitimists and "Young England"
exhibited this spectacle.
In pointing out that their mode of exploitation was different to
that of the bourgeoisie, the feudalists forget that they
exploited under circumstances and conditions that were quite
different, and that are now antiquated. In showing that, under
their rule, the modern proletariat never existed, they forget
that the modern bourgeoisie is the necessary offspring of their
The Communist Manifesto |
