| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: ammunition and the apparatus for synthesising Carolinum was
assured, the disbanding or social utilisation of the various
masses of troops still under arms had to be arranged, the
salvation of the year's harvests, and the feeding, housing, and
employment of the drifting millions of homeless people. In
Canada, in South America, and Asiatic Russia there were vast
accumulations of provision that was immovable only because of the
breakdown of the monetary and credit systems. These had to be
brought into the famine districts very speedily if entire
depopulation was to be avoided, and their transportation and the
revival of communications generally absorbed a certain proportion
The Last War: A World Set Free |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: him invisible; and like the Arabian tales of the Thousand Nights.
O.M. And there are dreams that are rational, simple,
consistent, and unfantastic?
Y.M. Yes. I have dreams that are like that. Dreams that
are just like real life; dreams in which there are several
persons with distinctly differentiated characters--inventions of
my mind and yet strangers to me: a vulgar person; a refined one;
a wise person; a fool; a cruel person; a kind and compassionate
one; a quarrelsome person; a peacemaker; old persons and young;
beautiful girls and homely ones. They talk in character, each
preserves his own characteristics. There are vivid fights, vivid
What is Man? |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: remember that, you will be tempted to put things strongly, and
say you will marry no one who is not like George the Second,
and cannot state openly a distaste for poetry and painting.
The word "facts" is, in some ways, crucial. I have
spoken with Jesuits and Plymouth Brethren, mathematicians and
poets, dogmatic republicans and dear old gentlemen in bird's-
eye neckcloths; and each understood the word "facts" in an
occult sense of his own. Try as I might, I could get no
nearer the principle of their division. What was essential to
them, seemed to me trivial or untrue. We could come to no
compromise as to what was, or what was not, important in the
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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 Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: terror, as I stood leaning my head on a post, and starting at every
footstep, lest it should be my mistress coming to tear my heart
out. One of the boys of the shop passing by, heard my tale, and
immediately repaired to his master, to give him a description of
my situation; and he touched the right key--the scandal it would
give rise to, if I were left to repeat my tale to every enquirer.
This plea came home to his reason, who had been sobered by his
wife's rage, the fury of which fell on him when I was out of her
reach, and he sent the boy to me with half-a-guinea, desiring him
to conduct me to a house, where beggars, and other wretches,
the refuse of society, nightly lodged.
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