| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: the door in his face. I had to do it. I loved him dearly. Five
and twenty shillings a week! There was that other man - a good
lodger. What is a girl to do? Could I've gone on the streets? He
seemed kind. He wanted me, anyhow. What was I to do with mother
and that poor boy? Eh? I said yes. He seemed good-natured, he
was freehanded, he had money, he never said anything. Seven years
- seven years a good wife to him, the kind, the good, the generous,
the - And he loved me. Oh yes. He loved me till I sometimes
wished myself - Seven years. Seven years a wife to him. And do
you know what he was, that dear friend of yours? Do you know what
he was? He was a devil!"
The Secret Agent |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: nothing which can be spoken of. Also the one which is not differs, and is
different in kind from the others, and therefore unlike them; and they
being other than the one, are unlike the one, which is therefore unlike
them. But one, being unlike other, must be like itself; for the unlikeness
of one to itself is the destruction of the hypothesis; and one cannot be
equal to the others; for that would suppose being in the one, and the
others would be equal to one and like one; both which are impossible, if
one does not exist. The one which is not, then, if not equal is unequal to
the others, and in equality implies great and small, and equality lies
between great and small, and therefore the one which is not partakes of
equality. Further, the one which is not has being; for that which is true
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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 Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Sir John Mandeville: And that flome runneth, also, three days in the week and bringeth
with him great stones and the rocks also therewith, and that great
plenty. And anon, as they be entered into the Gravelly Sea, they
be seen no more, but lost for evermore. And in those three days
that that river runneth, no man dare enter into it; but in the
other days men dare enter well enough.
Also beyond that flome, more upward to the deserts, is a great
plain all gravelly, between the mountains. And in that plain,
every day at the sun-rising, begin to grow small trees, and they
grow till mid-day, bearing fruit; but no man dare take of that
fruit, for it is a thing of faerie. And after mid-day, they
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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 Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin: considering that the feeling of surprise is generally a brief one,
that she should have learnt this gesture through her keen
sense of touch.
Huschke describes[12] a somewhat different yet allied gesture, which he says
is exhibited by persons when astonished. They hold themselves erect,
with the features as before described, but with the straightened arms
extended backwards--the stretched fingers being separated from each other.
I have never myself seen this gesture; but Huschke is probably correct;
for a friend asked another man how he would express great astonishment,
and he at once threw himself into this attitude.
These gestures are, I believe, explicable on the principle of antithesis.
Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals |
