| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: must take a walk. It is imperative that I free my spirit in the open air
for a moment. Would you come with me as far as the railway station and
back?"
"Very well, then, knock on my door when you're ready."
Thus the modern soul and I found ourselves together under the stars.
"What a night!" she said. "Do you know that poem of Sappho about her hands
in the stars...I am curiously sapphic. And this is so remarkable--not only
am I sapphic, I find in all the works of all the greatest writers,
especially in their unedited letters, some touch, some sign of myself--some
resemblance, some part of myself, like a thousand reflections of my own
hands in a dark mirror."
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: every character whatever as the rule, and non-inheritance as the anomaly.
The laws governing inheritance are quite unknown; no one can say why the
same peculiarity in different individuals of the same species, and in
individuals of different species, is sometimes inherited and sometimes not
so; why the child often reverts in certain characters to its grandfather or
grandmother or other much more remote ancestor; why a peculiarity is often
transmitted from one sex to both sexes or to one sex alone, more commonly
but not exclusively to the like sex. It is a fact of some little
importance to us, that peculiarities appearing in the males of our domestic
breeds are often transmitted either exclusively, or in a much greater
degree, to males alone. A much more important rule, which I think may be
On the Origin of Species |
