| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: he put it to us in this way--marking the points with a lean
forefinger--as we sat and lazily admired his earnestness over
this new paradox (as we thought it:) and his fecundity.
`You must follow me carefully. I shall have to controvert one
or two ideas that are almost universally accepted. The geometry,
for instance, they taught you at school is founded on a
misconception.'
`Is not that rather a large thing to expect us to begin upon?'
said Filby, an argumentative person with red hair.
`I do not mean to ask you to accept anything without reasonable
ground for it. You will soon admit as much as I need from you.
The Time Machine |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: have been able to give our senses a passport to everything
superficial, our thoughts a godlike desire for wanton pranks and
wrong inferences!--how from the beginning, we have contrived to
retain our ignorance in order to enjoy an almost inconceivable
freedom, thoughtlessness, imprudence, heartiness, and gaiety--in
order to enjoy life! And only on this solidified, granitelike
foundation of ignorance could knowledge rear itself hitherto, the
will to knowledge on the foundation of a far more powerful will,
the will to ignorance, to the uncertain, to the untrue! Not as
its opposite, but--as its refinement! It is to be hoped, indeed,
that LANGUAGE, here as elsewhere, will not get over its
Beyond Good and Evil |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: themselves to set them down.
Others set up bills to summon people to their lodgings for directions
and advice in the case of infection. These had specious titles also,
such as these: -
'An eminent High Dutch physician, newly come over from Holland,
where he resided during all the time of the great plague last year in
Amsterdam, and cured multitudes of people that actually had the
plague upon them.'
'An Italian gentlewoman just arrived from Naples, having a choice
secret to prevent infection, which she found out by her great
experience, and did wonderful cures with it in the late plague there,
A Journal of the Plague Year |
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 Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: clerks, and Aloysius, the boy, took inventory. It was a
terrifying thing, that process of casting up accounts. It
showed with such starkness how hideously the Brandeis ledger
sagged on the wrong side. The three women and the boy
worked with a sort of dogged cheerfulness at it, counting,
marking, dusting, washing. They found shelves full of
forgotten stock, dust-covered and profitless. They found
many articles of what is known as hard stock, akin to the
plush album; glass and plated condiment casters for the
dining table, in a day when individual salts and separate
vinegar cruets were already the thing; lamps with straight
Fanny Herself |
