| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: thousand.
I can think of no one objection, that will possibly be raised
against this proposal, unless it should be urged, that the number
of people will be thereby much lessened in the kingdom. This I
freely own, and 'twas indeed one principal design in offering it
to the world. I desire the reader will observe, that I calculate
my remedy for this one individual Kingdom of Ireland, and for no
other that ever was, is, or, I think, ever can be upon Earth.
Therefore let no man talk to me of other expedients: Of taxing
our absentees at five shillings a pound: Of using neither
cloaths, nor houshold furniture, except what is of our own growth
A Modest Proposal |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: by a belt of firs which almost enclosed the premises.
He journeyed on about a mile further to the village in which
the owner lived, and, returning with him to the house,
arrangements were completed, and the man undertook that one
room at least should be ready for occupation the next day.
Clym's intention was to live there alone until Eustacia
should join him on their wedding-day.
Then he turned to pursue his way homeward through the
drizzle that had so greatly transformed the scene.
The ferns, among which he had lain in comfort yesterday,
were dripping moisture from every frond, wetting his legs
Return of the Native |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: look down from afar upon men's life. The city is as
silent as a city of the dead: from all its humming
thoroughfares, not a voice, not a footfall, reaches you
upon the hill. The sea-surf, the cries of ploughmen, the
streams and the mill-wheels, the birds and the wind, keep
up an animated concert through the plain; from farm to
farm, dogs and crowing cocks contend together in
defiance; and yet from this Olympian station, except for
the whispering rumour of a train, the world has fallen
into a dead silence, and the business of town and country
grown voiceless in your ears. A crying hill-bird, the
|
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 Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: not triumphant; she seeks, combines, remodels, dies, and is born
again; she is even more convulsed when creating than when all was
fusion; Nature suffers, groans, is ignorant, degenerates, does evil;
deceives herself, annihilates herself, disappears, and begins again.
If God is associated with Nature, how can we explain the inoperative
indifference of the divine principle? Wherefore death? How came it
that Evil, king of the earth, was born of a God supremely good in His
essence and in His faculties, who can produce nothing that is not made
in His own image?
"But if, from this relentless conclusion which leads at once to
absurdity, we pass to details, what end are we to assign to the world?
Seraphita |
