| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs: The world was at least ignorant of its bereavement,
while to me it was a real and terrible actuality.
"What can we do?" I asked, hiding my perturbation beneath
the mask of a low and level voice.
"We may stop here, and die of asphyxiation when our atmosphere
tanks are empty," replied Perry, "or we may continue
on with the slight hope that we may later sufficiently
deflect the prospector from the vertical to carry us along
the arc of a great circle which must eventually return us
to the surface. If we succeed in so doing before we reach
the higher internal temperature we may even yet survive.
At the Earth's Core |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: place within us, a start, to use the common expression, which has
never been sufficiently observed, though it contains very curious
phenomena for science. This terrible agony, produced, possibly, by the
too sudden reunion of our two natures separated during sleep, is
usually transient; but in the poor young surgeon's case it lasted, and
even increased, causing him suddenly the most awful horror as he
beheld a pool of blood between Wahlenfer's bed and his own mattress.
The head of the unfortunate German lay on the ground; his body was
still on the bed; all its blood had flowed out by the neck.
Seeing the eyes still open but fixed, seeing the blood which had
stained his sheets and even his hands, recognizing his own surgical
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