| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: how the cattle of England have increased in weight and in early maturity,
compared with the stock formerly kept in this country. By comparing the
accounts given in old pigeon treatises of carriers and tumblers with these
breeds as now existing in Britain, India, and Persia, we can, I think,
clearly trace the stages through which they have insensibly passed, and
come to differ so greatly from the rock-pigeon.
Youatt gives an excellent illustration of the effects of a course of
selection, which may be considered as unconsciously followed, in so far
that the breeders could never have expected or even have wished to have
produced the result which ensued--namely, the production of two distinct
strains. The two flocks of Leicester sheep kept by Mr. Buckley and Mr.
On the Origin of Species |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: flight with me; but after six months of happiness she wished only to
die with me, and received several thrusts. I was entangled in a great
cloak that they flung over me, carried down to a gondola, and hurried
to the Pozzi dungeons. I was twenty-two years old. I gripped the hilt
of my broken sword so hard, that they could only have taken it from me
by cutting off my hand at the wrist. A curious chance, or rather the
instinct of self-preservation, led me to hide the fragment of the
blade in a corner of my cell, as if it might still be of use. They
tended me; none of my wounds were serious. At two-and-twenty one can
recover from anything. I was to lose my head on the scaffold. I
shammed illness to gain time. It seemed to me that the canal lay just
|
