| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: road by which humanity has climbed are whitened on either hand by the bones
of the womanhood that has fallen there, toiling beside man? Do you dare
say this, to us, when even today the food you eat, the clothes you wear,
the comfort you enjoy, is largely given you by the unending muscular toil
of woman?"
As the women of old planted and reaped and ground the grain that the
children they bore might eat; as the maidens of old spun that they might
make linen for their households and obtain the right to bear men; so,
though we bend no more over grindstones, or labour in the fields, or weave
by hand, it is our intention to enter all the new fields of labour, that we
also may have the power and right to bring men into the world. It is our
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Heroes by Charles Kingsley: beneath the fierce swell of the Euxine! Better so, than to
wander for ever, disgraced by the guilt of my princes; for
the blood of Absyrtus still tracks me, and woe follows hard
upon woe. And now some dark horror will clutch me, if I come
near the Isle of Ierne. (7) Unless you will cling to the
land, and sail southward and southward for ever, I shall
wander beyond the Atlantic, to the ocean which has no shore.'
Then they blest the magic bough, and sailed southward along
the land. But ere they could pass Ierne, the land of mists
and storms, the wild wind came down, dark and roaring, and
caught the sail, and strained the ropes. And away they drove
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Art of War by Sun Tzu: people and a drain on the resources of the State. The daily
expenditure will amount to a thousand ounces of silver.
[Cf. II. ss. ss. 1, 13, 14.]
There will be commotion at home and abroad, and men will drop
down exhausted on the highways.
[Cf. TAO TE CHING, ch. 30: "Where troops have been
quartered, brambles and thorns spring up. Chang Yu has the note:
"We may be reminded of the saying: 'On serious ground, gather in
plunder.' Why then should carriage and transportation cause
exhaustion on the highways?--The answer is, that not victuals
alone, but all sorts of munitions of war have to be conveyed to
The Art of War |
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 War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells: like the working of a gigantic electric machine than the usual
detonating reverberations. The flickering light was blinding
and confusing, and a thin hail smote gustily at my face as
I drove down the slope.
At first I regarded little but the road before me, and then
abruptly my attention was arrested by something that was
moving rapidly down the opposite slope of Maybury Hill. At
first I took it for the wet roof of a house, but one flash
following another showed it to be in swift rolling movement.
It was an elusive vision--a moment of bewildering darkness, and
then, in a flash like daylight, the red masses of the Orphanage
War of the Worlds |
