| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: servant who used to tell me that if I were not good, by which she
meant if I did not behave with a single eye to her personal
convenience, the cock would come down the chimney. Less imaginative
but equally dishonest people told me I should go to hell if I did not
make myself agreeable to them. Bodily violence, provided it be the
hasty expression of normal provoked resentment and not vicious
cruelty, cannot harm a child as this sort of pious fraud harms it.
There is a legal limit to physical cruelty; and there are also human
limits to it. There is an active Society which brings to book a good
many parents who starve and torture and overwork their children, and
intimidates a good many more. When parents of this type are caught,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: wondering what new and savage scourge had come to devastate
their flocks.
A half mile from the valley in which Tarzan stood, a score
of white-robed figures, bearing long, wicked-looking guns,
halted at the sound, and looked at one another with
questioning eyes. But presently, as it was not repeated,
they took up their silent, stealthy way toward the valley.
Tarzan was now confident that Gernois had no intention
of returning for him, but he could not fathom the object
that had prompted the officer to desert him, yet leave him
free to return to camp. His horse gone, he decided that it
The Return of Tarzan |
