| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: women prepared, not only to vote in support of these
decisions, but with a carefully fostered readiness to sacrifice
their lives for them if necessary; 600,000 men and women
who are persuaded that by their way alone is humanity to be
saved; who are persuaded (to put it as cynically and
unsympathetically as possible) that the noblest death one can
die is in carrying out a decision of the Central Committee;
such a body, even in a country such as Russia, is an
enormously strong embodiment of human will, an
instrument of struggle capable of working something very
like miracles. It can be and is controlled like an army in
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: To spoil antiquities of hammer'd steel,
And turn the giddy round of Fortune's wheel;
'To show the beldame daughters of her daughter,
To make the child a man, the man a child,
To slay the tiger that doth live by slaughter,
To tame the unicorn and lion wild,
To mock the subtle, in themselves beguil'd;
To cheer the ploughman with increaseful crops,
And waste huge stones with little water-drops.
'Why work'st thou mischief in thy pilgrimage,
Unless thou couldst return to make amends?
|
