| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: mistresses, or as kept wives, to cease from all forms of active toil, and,
as the passive tools of sexual reproduction, or, more decadently still, as
the mere instruments of sexual indulgence, to sink into a condition of
complete and helpless sex-parasitism.
Sex-parasitism, therefore, presents itself at the end of the nineteenth
century and beginning of the twentieth in a guise which it has never before
worn. We, the European women of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
stand therefore in a position the gravity and importance of which was not
equalled by that of any of our forerunners in the ancient civilisation. As
we master and rise above, or fall and are conquered by, the difficulties of
our position, so also will be the future, not merely of our own class, or
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Underground City by Jules Verne: block of coal has just been extracted from the Dochart pit."
And in confirmation of his words, James Starr pointed to a lump
of coal which had been kept at the bottom of a basket.
"This piece of coal, my friends," resumed James Starr, "is like the
last drop of blood which has flowed through the veins of the mine!
We shall keep it, as the first fragment of coal is kept,
which was extracted a hundred and fifty years ago from the bearings
of Aberfoyle. Between these two pieces, how many generations
of workmen have succeeded each other in our pits! Now, it is over!
The last words which your engineer will address to you are a farewell.
You have lived in this mine, which your hands have emptied.
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: WIND! OH-YE-HO, CHEERLY MEN!" the crew singing for joy, that so
promising an event should so soon have falsified the evil portents
preceding it.
In compliance with the standing order of his commander--to report
immediately, and at any one of the twenty-four hours, any decided
change in the affairs of the deck,--Starbuck had no sooner trimmed
the yards to the breeze--however reluctantly and gloomily,--than he
mechanically went below to apprise Captain Ahab of the circumstance.
Ere knocking at his state-room, he involuntarily paused before it a
moment. The cabin lamp--taking long swings this way and that--was
burning fitfully, and casting fitful shadows upon the old man's
Moby Dick |
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 Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: were obliged to sell their jewels. Poverty appeared to them suddenly,
--not hideous, but plainly clothed, almost easy to endure; its voice
had nothing terrifying; with it came neither spectres, nor despair,
nor rags; but it made them lose the memory and the habits of comfort;
it dried the springs of pride. Then, before they knew it, came want,--
want in all its horror, indifferent to its rags, treading underfoot
all human sentiments.
Seven or eight months after the birth of the little Bartolomeo, it
would have been hard to see in the mother who suckled her sickly babe
the original of the beautiful portrait, the sole remaining ornament of
the squalid home. Without fire through a hard winter, the graceful
|
