| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad: this way managed in time to pour lots of Indian Ocean
into the main hatch. The bright stream flashed in sun-
shine, fell into a layer of white crawling smoke, and van-
ished on the black surface of coal. Steam ascended
mingling with the smoke. We poured salt water as into
a barrel without a bottom. It was our fate to pump in
that ship, to pump out of her, to pump into her; and
after keeping water out of her to save ourselves from
being drowned, we frantically poured water into her to
save ourselves from being burnt.
"And she crawled on, do or die, in the serene weather.
Youth |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: of constitution, no need of toil. For such a life, what we
should call the weak are as well equipped as the strong, are
indeed no longer weak. Better equipped indeed they are, for the
strong would be fretted by an energy for which there was no
outlet. No doubt the exquisite beauty of the buildings I saw was
the outcome of the last surgings of the now purposeless energy of
mankind before it settled down into perfect harmony with the
conditions under which it lived--the flourish of that triumph
which began the last great peace. This has ever been the fate of
energy in security; it takes to art and to eroticism, and then
come languor and decay.
The Time Machine |
