| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: trooping in clumsily round the corners of cargo-sheds to eat their
food in peace out of red cotton handkerchiefs had the air of
picnicking by the side of a lonely mountain pool. They were
restful (and I should say very unprofitable), those basins, where
the chief officer of one of the ships involved in the harassing,
strenuous, noisy activity of the New South Dock only a few yards
away could escape in the dinner-hour to stroll, unhampered by men
and affairs, meditating (if he chose) on the vanity of all things
human. At one time they must have been full of good old slow West
Indiamen of the square-stern type, that took their captivity, one
imagines, as stolidly as they had faced the buffeting of the waves
The Mirror of the Sea |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: image;" and hath said since then, and says for ever and for ever,
"Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world."
But now, friend, who listenest, perhaps instructed, and at least
amused - if, as Professor Harvey well says, the simpler animals
represent, as in a glass, the scattered organs of the higher races,
which of your organs is represented by that "sca'd man's head,"
which the Devon children more gracefully, yet with less adherence
to plain likeness, call "mermaid's head," (12) which we picked up
just now on Paignton Sands? Or which, again, by its more beautiful
little congener, (13) five or six of which are adhering tightly to
the slab before us, a ball covered with delicate spines of lilac
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: dry apothecary, of no particular age and colour, with a strong
Edinburgh accent and about as emotional as a bagpipe. Well, sir,
he was like the rest of us; every time he looked at my prisoner, I
saw that Sawbones turn sick and white with desire to kill him. I
knew what was in his mind, just as he knew what was in mine; and
killing being out of the question, we did the next best. We told
the man we could and would make such a scandal out of this as
should make his name stink from one end of London to the other.
If he had any friends or any credit, we undertook that he should
lose them. And all the time, as we were pitching it in red hot,
we were keeping the women off him as best we could for they were
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde |
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 Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: "The third period will be occupied in building machinery,
with a view to the production of articles in general demand,
and, finally, the fourth period will be that in which we are
able to produce these articles."
Does it not occur, even to the most casual reader, that there
is very little politics in that program, and that, no matter
what kind of Government should be in Russia, it would have
to endorse that programme word for word? I would ask any
who doubt this to turn again to my first two chapters
describing the nature of the economic crisis in Russia, and to
remind themselves how, not only the lack of things but the
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