| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Burning Daylight by Jack London: one-horse concern in the United States. You cross on it every
day, six days in the week. That's say, twenty-five days a month,
or three hundred a year. Now long does it take you one way?
Forty minutes, if you're lucky. I'm going to put you across in
twenty minutes. If that ain't making two minutes grow where one
grew before, knock off my head with little apples. I'll save you
twenty minutes each way. That's forty minutes a day, times three
hundred, equals twelve thousand minutes a year, just for you,
just for one person. Let's see: that's two hundred whole hours.
Suppose I save two hundred hours a year for thousands of other
folks,--that's farming some, ain't it?"
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: strong, and far more intelligent, were we honestly and wisely taught in
our early years those acts and policies of hers wherein she fell below
her lofty and humane ideals. Her character and her record on the whole
from the beginning are fine enough to allow the shadows to throw the
sunlight into relief. To have produced at three stages of our growth
three such men as Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt, is quite sufficient
justification for our existence
Chapter VII: Tarred with the Same Stick
The blackest page in our history is our treatment of the Indian. To speak
of it is a thankless task--thankless, and necessary.
This land was the Indian's house, not ours. He was here first, nobody
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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 At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs: For a moment the bull stood bellowing and quivering
with pain and rage, its cloven hoofs widespread,
its tail lashing viciously from side to side, and then,
in a mad orgy of bucking it went careening about the
arena in frenzied attempt to unseat its rending rider.
It was with difficulty that the girl avoided the first mad
rush of the wounded animal.
All its efforts to rid itself of the tiger seemed futile,
until in desperation it threw itself upon the ground,
rolling over and over. A little of this so disconcerted
the tiger, knocking its breath from it I imagine,
At the Earth's Core |
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 Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: feeling and thought upon the surface of our earth, "why may we
not declare that the rays transmitted by the sun to the earth and
the other planets are nothing more nor less than the emanations
of these souls?" And now we may begin to form an adequate
conception, of the rigorously scientific character of our
author's method. There have been many hypotheses by which to
account for the supply of solar radiance. One of the most
ingenious and probable of these hypotheses is that of Helmholtz,
according to which the solar radiance is due to the arrested
motion of the sun's constituent particles toward their common
centre of gravity. But this is too fanciful to satisfy M.
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
