| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft: and in the yard outside the no less frightened herd were pawing
and lowing pitifully, having followed the boy back in the panic
they shared with him. Between gasps Luther tried to stammer out
his tale to Mrs Corey.
'Up thar in the rud beyont the glen,
Mis' Corey - they's suthin' ben thar! It smells like thunder,
an' all the bushes an' little trees is pushed back from the rud
like they'd a haouse ben moved along of it. An' that ain't the
wust, nuther. They's prints in the rud, Mis' Corey - great raound
prints as big as barrel-heads, all sunk dawon deep like a elephant
had ben along, only they's a sight more nor four feet could make!
The Dunwich Horror |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: the world; but as far as I have gone, the relation generally holds good.
We see Britain separated by a shallow channel from Europe, and the mammals
are the same on both sides; we meet with analogous facts on many islands
separated by similar channels from Australia. The West Indian Islands
stand on a deeply submerged bank, nearly 1000 fathoms in depth, and here we
find American forms, but the species and even the genera are distinct. As
the amount of modification in all cases depends to a certain degree on the
lapse of time, and as during changes of level it is obvious that islands
separated by shallow channels are more likely to have been continuously
united within a recent period to the mainland than islands separated by
deeper channels, we can understand the frequent relation between the depth
On the Origin of Species |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw: reproach me, not for writing this play, but for wasting my
energies on "pleasant plays" for the amusement of frivolous
people, when I can build up such excellent stage sermons on their
own work. Mrs Warren's Profession is the one play of mine which
I could submit to a censorship without doubt of the result; only,
it must not be the censorship of the minor theatre critic, nor of
an innocent court official like the Lord Chamberlain's Examiner,
much less of people who consciously profit by Mrs Warren's
profession, or who personally make use of it, or who hold the
widely whispered view that it is an indispensable safety-valve
for the protection of domestic virtue, or, above all, who are
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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 Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: and the merchants and the miscellaneous people who had never been
discovered to possess names were stretched in their arm-chairs
with their newspapers on their knees. The conversation in these
circumstances was very gentle, fragmentary, and intermittent,
but the room was full of the indescribable stir of life. Every now
and then the moth, which was now grey of wing and shiny of thorax,
whizzed over their heads, and hit the lamps with a thud.
A young woman put down her needlework and exclaimed, "Poor creature!
it would be kinder to kill it." But nobody seemed disposed to rouse
himself in order to kill the moth. They watched it dash from lamp
to lamp, because they were comfortable, and had nothing to do.
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