| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: `It was impossible not to--'
"`Love him,' she finished eagerly, silencing me into an appalled dumbness.
`How true! how true! But when you think that no one knew him so well as I!
I had all his noble confidence. I knew him best.'
"`You knew him best,' I repeated. And perhaps she did.
But with every word spoken the room was growing darker,
and only her forehead, smooth and white, remained illumined
by the inextinguishable light of belief and love.
"`You were his friend,' she went on. `His friend,' she repeated,
a little louder. `You must have been, if he had given you this,
and sent you to me. I feel I can speak to you--and oh!
Heart of Darkness |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: criminal differs intellectually from the normal person only in a
slightly lower level of intelligence, a condition that may well
be explained by the fact that the convicted criminal has been
found out. Crime has been happily defined by a recent and most
able investigator into the character of the criminal[12] as "an
unusual act committed by a perfectly normal person." At the same
time, according to the same authority, there is a type of normal
person who tends to be convicted of crime, and he is
differentiated from his fellows by defective physique and mental
capacity and an increased possession of antisocial qualities.[13]
[12] "The English Convict," a statistical study, by Charles
A Book of Remarkable Criminals |
