| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: of the sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the
method of collocation of these stones--in the order of their
arrangement, as well as in that of the many fungi which
overspread them, and of the decayed trees which stood around--
above all, in the long undisturbed endurance of this arrangement,
and in its reduplication in the still waters of the tarn. Its
evidence--the evidence of the sentience--was to be seen, he said,
(and I here started as he spoke,) in the gradual yet certain
condensation of an atmosphere of their own about the waters and
the walls. The result was discoverable, he added, in that
silent, yet importunate and terrible influence which for
The Fall of the House of Usher |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: foam under the bow. It is the calm that brings ships mysteriously
together; it is your wind that is the great separator.
The taller the ship, the further she can be seen; and her white
tallness breathed upon by the wind first proclaims her size. The
tall masts holding aloft the white canvas, spread out like a snare
for catching the invisible power of the air, emerge gradually from
the water, sail after sail, yard after yard, growing big, till,
under the towering structure of her machinery, you perceive the
insignificant, tiny speck of her hull.
The tall masts are the pillars supporting the balanced planes that,
motionless and silent, catch from the air the ship's motive-power,
The Mirror of the Sea |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: "Chief Inspector Heat gone yet?"
"Yes, sir. Went away half-an-hour ago."
He nodded. "That will do." And sitting still, with his hat pushed
off his forehead, he thought that it was just like Heat's
confounded cheek to carry off quietly the only piece of material
evidence. But he thought this without animosity. Old and valued
servants will take liberties. The piece of overcoat with the
address sewn on was certainly not a thing to leave about.
Dismissing from his mind this manifestation of Chief Inspector
Heat's mistrust, he wrote and despatched a note to his wife,
charging her to make his apologies to Michaelis' great lady, with
The Secret Agent |
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 Cratylus by Plato: them has either perished wholly, or is only doubtfully recovered by the
efforts of modern philology. The verses have been repeated as a chant or
part of a ritual, but they have had no relation to ordinary life or speech.
(2) The invention of writing again is commonly attributed to a particular
epoch, and we are apt to think that such an inestimable gift would have
immediately been diffused over a whole country. But it may have taken a
long time to perfect the art of writing, and another long period may have
elapsed before it came into common use. Its influence on language has been
increased ten, twenty or one hundred fold by the invention of printing.
Before the growth of poetry or the invention of writing, languages were
only dialects. So they continued to be in parts of the country in which
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