The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: they would disappear into the earth as the first one had disappeared.
His people must keep away from them, and hope for the best.
Kayerts and Carlier did not disappear, but remained above on this
earth, that, somehow, they fancied had become bigger and very empty.
It was not the absolute and dumb solitude of the post that impressed
them so much as an inarticulate feeling that something from within
them was gone, something that worked for their safety, and had kept
the wilderness from interfering with their hearts. The images of home;
the memory of people like them, of men that thought and felt as they
used to think and feel, receded into distances made indistinct by the
glare of unclouded sunshine. And out of the great silence of the
 Tales of Unrest |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: strings of pearls. The spiral edifice is superb, graced with its
own simplicity alone. I count a score of whorls which gradually
decrease until they vanish in the delicate point. They are edged
with a fine groove.
I take a pencil and draw a rough generating line to this cone; and,
relying merely on the evidence of my eyes, which are more or less
practised in geometric measurements, I find that the spiral groove
intersects this generating line at an angle of unvarying value.
The consequence of this result is easily deduced. If projected on
a plane perpendicular to the axis of the shell, the generating
lines of the cone would become radii; and the groove which winds
 The Life of the Spider |