| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot: has been repeatedly attempted, with no other result than to crowd
our lunatic asylums with the would-be solvers. Hence,
after fruitless attempts to suppress such investigations indirectly
by making them liable to a heavy tax, the Legislature,
in comparatively recent times, absolutely prohibited them.
I -- alas, I alone in Flatland -- know now only too well
the true solution of this mysterious problem; but my knowledge
cannot be made intelligible to a single one of my countrymen;
and I am mocked at -- I, the sole possessor of the truths of Space
and of the theory of the introduction of Light from the world
of three Dimensions -- as if I were the maddest of the mad!
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions |
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 Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: them, and in their branches he could hear the nightingales. "Empty!
Empty!" he said, aloud. And he lay for two days and nights hearing the
wind and the nightingales in the far trees of Aranhal. But Felipe,
watching, only heard the Padre crying through the hours, "Empty! Empty!"
Then the wind in the trees died down, and the Padre could get out of bed,
and soon be in the garden. But the voices within him still talked all the
while as he sat watching the sails when they passed between the
headlands. Their words, falling for ever the same way, beat his spirit
sore, like blows upon flesh already bruised. If he could only change what
they said, he would rest.
"Has the Padre any mall for Santa Barbara?" asked Felipe. "The ship
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