| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche: shoulder, the prying sprite! And it squatted on a stone in front of me.
There was however a gateway just where we halted.
"Look at this gateway! Dwarf!" I continued, "it hath two faces. Two roads
come together here: these hath no one yet gone to the end of.
This long lane backwards: it continueth for an eternity. And that long
lane forward--that is another eternity.
They are antithetical to one another, these roads; they directly abut on
one another:--and it is here, at this gateway, that they come together.
The name of the gateway is inscribed above: 'This Moment.'
But should one follow them further--and ever further and further on,
thinkest thou, dwarf, that these roads would be eternally antithetical?"--
 Thus Spake Zarathustra |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: beginning to learn, tar in general by no means adds to the rope's
durability or strength, however much it may give it compactness and
gloss.
Of late years the Manilla rope has in the American fishery almost
entirely superseded hemp as a material for whale-lines; for, though
not so durable as hemp, it is stronger, and far more soft and
elastic; and I will add (since there is an aesthetics in all things),
is much more handsome and becoming to the boat, than hemp. Hemp is a
dusky, dark fellow, a sort of Indian; but Manilla is as a
golden-haired Circassian to behold.
The whale-line is only two-thirds of an inch in thickness. At first
 Moby Dick |