| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: motionless for a long time.
"Waldo," she said, suddenly, "they are laughing at us."
"Who?" he asked, starting up.
"They--the stars!" she said, softly. "Do you not see? There is a little
white, mocking finger pointing down at us from each one of them! We are
talking of tomorrow and tomorrow, and our hearts are so strong; we are not
thinking of something that can touch us softly in the dark and make us
still forever. They are laughing at us Waldo."
Both sat looking upward.
"Do you ever pray?" he asked her in a low voice.
"No."
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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 Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: after Revolution
CHAPTER IV. THE PART PLAYED BY THE PEOPLE IN REVOLUTIONS
1. The stability and malleability Of the national mind
2. How the People regards Revolution
3. The supposed part of the People during Revolution
4. The popular entity and its constituent elements
BOOK II
THE FORMS OF MENTALITY PREVALENT DURING REVOLUTION
CHAPTER I. INDIVIDUAL VARIATIONS OF CHARACTER IN TIME OF
REVOLUTION
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare: Lie further off, in humane modesty,
Such separation, as may well be said,
Becomes a vertuous batchelour, and a maide,
So farre be distant, and good night sweet friend;
Thy loue nere alter, till thy sweet life end
Lys. Amen, amen, to that faire prayer, say I,
And then end life, when I end loyalty:
Heere is my bed, sleepe giue thee all his rest
Her. With halfe that wish, the wishers eyes be prest.
Enter Pucke. They sleepe.
Puck. Through the Forest haue I gone,
A Midsummer Night's Dream |
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 Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: digger, and a friend of his, a gardener from the country,
accompanied me into one after another of the cells and
little courtyards in which it gratified the wealthy of
old days to enclose their old bones from neighbourhood.
In one, under a sort of shrine, we found a forlorn human
effigy, very realistically executed down to the detail of
his ribbed stockings, and holding in his hand a ticket
with the date of his demise. He looked most pitiful and
ridiculous, shut up by himself in his aristocratic
precinct, like a bad old boy or an inferior forgotten
deity under a new dispensation; the burdocks grew
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