| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tik-Tok of Oz by L. Frank Baum: Thought-Creating, Perfect-Talking
MECHANICAL MAN
Fitted with our Special Clockwork Attachment.
Thinks, Speaks, Acts, and Does Everything
but Live.
"Isn't he wonderful!" exclaimed the Princess.
"Yes; but here's more," said Betsy, reading
from another engraved plate:
DIRECTIONS FOR USING:
For THINKING:--Wind the Clockwork
Man under his left arm, (marked No. 1).
Tik-Tok of Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: religious profession of any who were under the dominion of this
wicked prejudice, and I could not, therefore, feel that in
joining them, I was joining a Christian church, at all. I tried
other churches in New Bedford, with the same result, and finally,
I attached myself to a small body of colored Methodists, known as
the Zion Methodists. Favored with the affection and confidence
of the members of this humble communion, I was soon made a
classleader and a local preacher among them. Many seasons of
peace and joy I experienced among them, the remembrance of which
is still precious, although I could not see it to be my duty to
remain with that body, when I found that it consented to the same
My Bondage and My Freedom |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson: no wife.
It fell in the time of the fishing that the man awoke in his house
about the midst of the afternoon. The fire burned in the midst,
and the smoke went up and the sun came down by the chimney. And
the man was aware of the likeness of one that warmed his hands at
the red peats.
"I greet you," said the man, "in the name of God."
"I greet you," said he that warmed his hands, "but not in the name
of God, for I am none of His; nor in the name of Hell, for I am not
of Hell. For I am but a bloodless thing, less than wind and
lighter than a sound, and the wind goes through me like a net, and
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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 The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: much I might think, and however far my thoughts might travel, it
is clear to me that there is nothing vital, nothing of great
importance in my desires. In my passion for science, in my desire
to live, in this sitting on a strange bed, and in this striving
to know myself -- in all the thoughts, feelings, and ideas I form
about everything, there is no common bond to connect it all into
one whole. Every feeling and every thought exists apart in me;
and in all my criticisms of science, the theatre, literature, my
pupils, and in all the pictures my imagination draws, even the
most skilful analyst could not find what is called a general
idea, or the god of a living man.
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