| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: yes,' the old man answered; 'they have treated me as if I had been
their own child.' That answer of his seemed so remarkable to an
officer then stationed at Grenoble, that he repeated it in more than
one Parisian salon. That officer was the celebrated moralist
Vauvenargues, and in this way the beautiful saying came to the
knowledge of another writer named Chamfort. Ah! still more forcible
phrases are often struck out among us, but they lack a historian
worthy of them."
"I have come across Moravians and Lollards in Bohemia and Hungary,"
said Genestas. "They are a kind of people something like your
mountaineers, good folk who endure the sufferings of war with angelic
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: induced radio-activity into the sphere of industrial production,
and its first general use was to replace the steam-engine in
electrical generating stations. Hard upon the appearance of this
came the Dass-Tata engine--the invention of two among the
brilliant galaxy of Bengali inventors the modernisation of Indian
thought was producing at this time--which was used chiefly for
automobiles, aeroplanes, waterplanes, and such-like, mobile
purposes. The American Kemp engine, differing widely in principle
but equally practicable, and the Krupp-Erlanger came hard upon
the heels of this, and by the autumn of 1954 a gigantic
replacement of industrial methods and machinery was in progress
 The Last War: A World Set Free |