| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from U. S. Project Trinity Report by Carl Maag and Steve Rohrer: detonated on 16 July 1945 at the Alamogordo Bombing Range in
south-central New Mexico.
Three weeks later, on 6 August, the first uranium-fueled nuclear bomb,
a gun-type weapon code-named LITTLE BOY, was detonated over the
Japanese city of Hiroshima. On 9 August, the FAT MAN nuclear bomb, a
plutonium-fueled implosion weapon identical to the TRINITY device, was
detonated over another Japanese city, Nagasaki. Two days later, the
Japanese Government informed the United States of its decision to end
the war. On 2 September 1945, the Japanese Empire officially
surrendered to the Allied Governments, bringing World War II to an
end.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Mansion by Henry van Dyke: founded.
He's always thinking of others, and planning for them. And
surely,
for us, he does everything. How well he has planned this trip
to Europe for me and the girls--the court-presentation at Berlin,
the season on the Riviera, the visits in England with the
Plumptons and
the Halverstones. He says Lord Halverstone has the finest
old house in Sussex, pure Elizabethan, and all the old customs
are
kept up, too--family prayers every morning for all the domestics.
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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 Philebus by Plato: variance with religion and with any higher conception both of politics and
of morals. It has not satisfied their imagination; it has offended their
taste. To elevate pleasure, 'the most fleeting of all things,' into a
general idea seems to such men a contradiction. They do not desire to
bring down their theory to the level of their practice. The simplicity of
the 'greatest happiness' principle has been acceptable to philosophers, but
the better part of the world has been slow to receive it.
Before proceeding, we may make a few admissions which will narrow the field
of dispute; and we may as well leave behind a few prejudices, which
intelligent opponents of Utilitarianism have by this time 'agreed to
discard'. We admit that Utility is coextensive with right, and that no
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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 Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: as I jogged along musing of the beauty of the English landscape and
drinking in the sweet air of June, a cowardly thief fired a pistol
at me from behind a hedge, purposing to plunder me if I fell. The
bullet passed through my hat, grazing the skull, but before I could
do anything the rascal fled, seeing that he had missed his mark,
and I went on my journey, thinking to myself that it would indeed
have been strange, if after passing such great dangers in safety, I
had died at last by the hand of a miserable foot-pad within five
miles of London town.
I rode hard all that day and the next, and my horse being stout and
swift, by half-past seven o'clock of the evening I pulled up upon
Montezuma's Daughter |
