| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas: song in praise of Cromwell. He found the other two friends
sitting at table before a good fire, drinking a bottle of
port and devouring a cold chicken. Porthos was cursing the
infamous parliamentarians; D'Artagnan ate in silence,
revolving in his mind the most audacious plans.
Aramis related what had been agreed upon. D'Artagnan
approved with a movement of the head and Porthos with his
voice.
"Bravo!" he said; "besides, we shall be there at the time of
the flight. What with D'Artagnan, Grimaud and Musqueton, we
can manage to dispatch eight of them. I say nothing about
Twenty Years After |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: construction is monotonous; my language is poor and timid. Often
I write what I do not mean; I have forgotten the beginning when I
am writing the end. Often I forget ordinary words, and I always
have to waste a great deal of energy in avoiding superfluous
phrases and unnecessary parentheses in my letters, both
unmistakable proofs of a decline in mental activity. And it is
noteworthy that the simpler the letter the more painful the
effort to write it. At a scientific article I feel far more
intelligent and at ease than at a letter of congratulation or a
minute of proceedings. Another point: I find it easier to write
German or English than to write Russian.
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe: of those who would put the welfare of a few miserable fugitives
before great state interests!
He was as bold as a lion about it, and "mightily convinced"
not only himself, but everybody that heard him;--but then his idea
of a fugitive was only an idea of the letters that spell the
word,--or at the most, the image of a little newspaper picture of
a man with a stick and bundle with "Ran away from the subscriber"
under it. The magic of the real presence of distress,--the
imploring human eye, the frail, trembling human hand, the
despairing appeal of helpless agony,--these he had never tried.
He had never thought that a fugitive might be a hapless mother,
Uncle Tom's Cabin |
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 Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: conditions, which have done away with the primary necessity for muscular
force and pugilistic arts, have also inverted her place in the scale of
social values.
It is possible, that the human female, like the Jew, the male of that type
farthest removed from the dominant male type of the past, may in the future
find, that, so far from those qualities which, in an earlier condition,
lessened her social value and power of labour, continuing to do so, they
will increase it. That the delicacy of hand, lightness of structure which
were fatal when the dominant labour of life was to wield a battle-axe or
move a weight, may be no restraint but even an assistance in the
intellectual and more delicate mechanical fields of labour; that the
|
