| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: to be kind to her and trot her about on holidays. I
believe she was a great friend of the first Mrs. Beaufort's.
And she's our cousin, of course. So I rang her up
this morning, before I went out, and told her you and I
were here for two days and wanted to see her."
Archer continued to stare at him. "You told her I
was here?"
"Of course--why not?" Dallas's eye brows went up
whimsically. Then, getting no answer, he slipped his
arm through his father's with a confidential pressure.
"I say, father: what was she like?"
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from 1984 by George Orwell: workers whom we call 'the proles' are only intermittently conscious of the
war. When it is necessary they can be prodded into frenzies of fear and
hatred, but when left to themselves they are capable of forgetting for
long periods that the war is happening. It is in the ranks of the Party,
and above all of the Inner Party, that the true war enthusiasm is found.
World-conquest is believed in most firmly by those who know it to be
impossible. This peculiar linking-together of opposites--knowledge with
ignorance, cynicism with fanaticism--is one of the chief distinguishing
marks of Oceanic society. The official ideology abounds with contradictions
even when there is no practical reason for them. Thus, the Party rejects
and vilifies every principle for which the Socialist movement originally
 1984 |