| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot: to let his son spend a third of his life in abstract studies.
The children of the poor are therefore allowed to "feel"
from their earliest years, and they gain thereby a precocity
and an early vivacity which contrast at first most favourably with
the inert, undeveloped, and listless behaviour of the half-instructed
youths of the Polygonal class; but when the latter have at last
completed their University course, and are prepared to put
their theory into practice, the change that comes over them
may almost be described as a new birth, and in every art, science,
and social pursuit they rapidly overtake and distance
their Triangular competitors.
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions |
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 The Human Drift by Jack London: as we looked, we saw a strand fray and part. Then we jumped.
Scarcely had we bent another line between the stern and the wharf,
when the original line parted. As we bent another line for'ard,
the original one there crackled and parted. After that, it was an
inferno of work and excitement.
We ran more and more lines, and more and more lines continued to
part, and more and more the pretty boat went over on her side. We
bent all our spare lines; we unrove sheets and halyards; we used
our two-inch hawser; we fastened lines part way up the mast, half
way up, and everywhere else. We toiled and sweated and enounced
our mutual and sincere conviction that God's grudge still held
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