| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: the Thebaid, starving in his frock of camel's hair, with his soul
fixed on the ineffable glories of the unseen, and striving, however
wildly and fantastically, to become an angel and not an ape, I will
say the hermit, and not the Caesar, is the civilised man.
There are plenty of histories of civilisation and theories of
civilisation abroad in the world just now, and which profess to show
you how the primeval savage has, or at least may have, become the
civilised man. For my part, with all due and careful consideration,
I confess I attach very little value to any of them: and for this
simple reason that we have no facts. The facts are lost.
Of course, if you assume a proposition as certainly true, it is easy
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Cromwell by William Shakespeare: BOWSER.
Is this that Bagot? fellows, bear him hence.
We will not now stand for his reply.
Lade him with Irons; we will have him tried
In England, where his villainies are known.
BAGOT.
Mischief, confusion, light upon you all!
O hang me, drown me, let me kill my self!
Let go my arms; let me run quick to hell.
BOWSER.
Away, bear him away; stop the slave's mouth.
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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 Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte: low, I daresay I shall keep up with you.'
'No,' she repeated, and continued sauntering on, pausing at
intervals to muse over a bit of moss, or a tuft of blanched grass,
or a fungus spreading its bright orange among the heaps of brown
foliage; and, ever and anon, her hand was lifted to her averted
face.
'Catherine, why are you crying, love?' I asked, approaching and
putting my arm over her shoulder. 'You mustn't cry because papa
has a cold; be thankful it is nothing worse.'
She now put no further restraint on her tears; her breath was
stifled by sobs.
Wuthering Heights |
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 Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: as the legitimate heir of the July monarchy, thus found itself surpassed
in its own ideal; but it cam to power, not as it had dreamed under Louis
Philippe, through a liberal revolt of the bourgeoisie against the
throne, but through a grape-shot-and-canistered mutiny of the
proletariat against Capital. That which it imagined to be the most
revolutionary, came about as the most counter-revolutionary event. The
fruit fell into its lap, but it fell from the Tree of Knowledge, not
from the Tree of life.
The exclusive power of the bourgeois republic lasted only from June 24
to the 10th of December, 1848. It is summed up in the framing of a
republican constitution and in the state of siege of Paris.
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