| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells: he half likes some of those beasts. It's his business, not mine.
They only sicken me with a sense of failure. I take no interest in them.
I fancy they follow in the lines the Kanaka missionary marked out,
and have a kind of mockery of a rational life, poor beasts!
There's something they call the Law. Sing hymns about `all thine.'
They build themselves their dens, gather fruit, and pull herbs--
marry even. But I can see through it all, see into their very souls,
and see there nothing but the souls of beasts, beasts that perish,
anger and the lusts to live and gratify themselves.--Yet they're odd;
complex, like everything else alive. There is a kind of upward
striving in them, part vanity, part waste sexual emotion,
The Island of Doctor Moreau |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Aeneid by Virgil: To raise and to defend the Tyrian tow'rs,
My wealth, my city, and myself are yours.
And would to Heav'n, the Storm, you felt, would bring
On Carthaginian coasts your wand'ring king.
My people shall, by my command, explore
The ports and creeks of ev'ry winding shore,
And towns, and wilds, and shady woods, in quest
Of so renown'd and so desir'd a guest."
Rais'd in his mind the Trojan hero stood,
And long'd to break from out his ambient cloud:
Achates found it, and thus urg'd his way:
Aeneid |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: to the entrance of a palace whose front appeared to extend, west and east,
to a distance of miles. Akinosuke was then shown into a reception-room of
wonderful size and splendor. His guides conducted him to the place of
honor, and respectfully seated themselves apart; while serving-maids, in
costume of ceremony, brought refreshments. When Akinosuke had partaken of
the refreshments, the two purple-robed attendants bowed low before him, and
addressed him in the following words,-- each speaking alternately,
according to the etiquette of courts:--
"It is now our honorable duty to inform you... as to the reason of your
having been summoned hither... Our master, the King, augustly desires that
you become his son-in-law;... and it is his wish and command that you shall
Kwaidan |
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 An International Episode by Henry James: "She is not so much that as she is charming when you really know her.
She is very shy."
"Oh, indeed!" said Percy Beaumont.
"Extremely shy," Mrs. Westgate repeated. "But she is a dear good girl; she is
a charming species of girl. She is not in the least a flirt; that isn't
at all her line; she doesn't know the alphabet of that sort of thing.
She is very simple, very serious. She has lived a great deal in Boston,
with another sister of mine--the eldest of us--who married a Bostonian.
She is very cultivated, not at all like me; I am not in the least cultivated.
She has studied immensely and read everything; she is what they call
in Boston 'thoughtful.'"
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