| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: ladies in powder and patches and courtly gentlemen with swords;
and when there was no company they spent whole days in the corner
parlour just over the housekeeper's room, between reading and
slumber and caressing their two pet dogs. When I was a boy I
used always to think of these two poor old creatures as superior
beings living, like God, somewhere through the ceiling.
Occasionally they bumped about a bit and one even heard them
overhead, which gave them a greater effect of reality without
mitigating their vertical predominance. Sometimes too I saw
them. Of course if I came upon them in the park or in the
shrubbery (where I was a trespasser) I hid or fled in pious
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from War and the Future by H. G. Wells: spites, his propaganda of church-going, his persecution of the
heretic and the illegitimate, his ecclesiastical politics, his
taboos, and his doctrinal touchiness.... That is why, though I
perceive there is a great wave of religious revival in the world
to-day, I doubt whether it bodes well for the professional
religions....
The other day I was talking to an eminent Anglican among various
other people and someone with an eye to him propounded this
remarkable view.
"There are four stages between belief and utter unbelief. There
are those who believe in God, those who doubt like Huxley the
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