| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Master of the World by Jules Verne: superstitious, was particularly upset. That same day after dinner, as
she was clearing away the things, she stopped before me, a water
bottle in one hand, the serviette in the other, and asked anxiously,
"Is there no news, sir?"
"None," I answered, knowing well to what she referred.
"The automobile has not come back?"
"No."
"Nor the boat?"
"Nor the boat There is no news even-in the best informed papers."
"But--your secret police information?"
"We are no wiser."
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: imagination pleases to adorn the perfect woman. If this hurried glance
at the population of Paris has enabled us to conceive the rarity of a
Raphaelesque face, and the passionate admiration which such an one
must inspire at the first sight, the prime interest of our history
will have been justified. /Quod erat demonstrandum/--if one may be
permitted to apply scholastic formulae to the science of manners.
Upon one of those fine spring mornings, when the leaves, although
unfolded, are not yet green, when the sun begins to gild the roofs,
and the sky is blue, when the population of Paris issues from its
cells to swarm along the boulevards, glides like a serpent of a
thousand coils through the Rue de la Paix towards the Tuileries,
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: be a hell. Monsieur Guillaume brought Joseph Lebas to despair by
telling him of Augustine's love for a stranger. Lebas, who had advised
his friend to become a suitor for Mademoiselle Virginie, saw all his
hopes wrecked. Mademoiselle Virginie, overcome by hearing that Joseph
had, in a way, refused her, had a sick headache. The dispute that had
arisen from the discussion between Monsieur and Madame Guillaume,
when, for the third time in their lives, they had been of antagonistic
opinions, had shown itself in a terrible form. Finally, at half-past
four in the afternoon, Augustine, pale, trembling, and with red eyes,
was haled before her father and mother. The poor child artlessly
related the too brief tale of her love. Reassured by a speech from her
|
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 1984 by George Orwell: the world, since whatever they produce is used for purposes of war, and
the object of waging a war is always to be in a better position in which
to wage another war. By their labour the slave populations allow the tempo
of continuous warfare to be speeded up. But if they did not exist, the
structure of world society, and the process by which it maintains itself,
would not be essentially different.
The primary aim of modern warfare (in accordance with the principles of
DOUBLETHINK, this aim is simultaneously recognized and not recognized by
the directing brains of the Inner Party) is to use up the products of the
machine without raising the general standard of living. Ever since the end
of the nineteenth century, the problem of what to do with the surplus of
1984 |
