| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Underground City by Jules Verne: carry me away into the regions of impossibility! Come, let us
return to the reality, which is sufficiently beautiful;
leave our picks here, where we may find them another day,
and let's take the road back to the cottage."
Nothing more could be done for the time. Later, the engineer,
accompanied by a brigade of miners, supplied with lamps
and all necessary tools, would résumé the exploration of
New Aberfoyle. It was now time to return to the Dochart pit.
The road was easy, the gallery running nearly straight
through the rock up to the orifice opened by the dynamite,
so there was no fear of their losing themselves.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll: (in which Alice had put `THE WHITE KNIGHT IS SLIDING DOWN THE
POKER. HE BALANCES VERY BADLY') `That's not a memorandum of
YOUR feelings!'
There was a book lying near Alice on the table, and while she
sat watching the White King (for she was still a little anxious
about him, and had the ink all ready to throw over him, in case
he fainted again), she turned over the leaves, to find some part
that she could read, `--for it's all in some language I don't
know,' she said to herself.
It was like this.
YKCOWREBBAJ
Through the Looking-Glass |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: the heaths: but you are not. They must have come from some land
near where the Azores are now; or how could heaths have got past
Africa, and the tropics, to the Cape of Good Hope?
It seems very wonderful, to be able to find out that there was a
great land once in the ocean all by a few little heaths.
Not by them only, child. There are many other plants, and animals
too, which make one think that so it must have been. And now I
will tell you something stranger still. There may have been a
time--some people say that there must--when Africa and South
America were joined by land.
Africa and South America! Was that before the heaths came here,
|
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 Time Machine by H. G. Wells: same beach, and I saw them distinctly now as soon as I stopped.
Dozens of them seemed to be crawling here and there, in the
sombre light, among the foliated sheets of intense green.
`I cannot convey the sense of abominable desolation that hung
over the world. The red eastern sky, the northward blackness,
the salt Dead Sea, the stony beach crawling with these foul,
slow-stirring monsters, the uniform poisonous-looking green of
the lichenous plants, the thin air that hurts one's lungs: all
contributed to an appalling effect. I moved on a hundred years,
and there was the same red sun--a little larger, a little
duller--the same dying sea, the same chill air, and the same
The Time Machine |
