| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: dreadful city; for all I can say you may have heard the talk of
the vilest, but I tell you you can have no conception of what I
know, not in your most fantastic, hideous dreams can you have
imaged forth the faintest shadow of what I have heard--and
seen. Yes, seen. I have seen the incredible, such horrors that
even I myself sometimes stop in the middle of the street and ask
whether it is possible for a man to behold such things and live.
In a year, Villiers, I was a ruined man, in body and soul--in
body and soul."
"But your property, Herbert? You had land in Dorset."
"I sold it all; the fields and woods, the dear old
The Great God Pan |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: of the thing than for any serious purpose of sustenance.
Why in the name of all the gnawing devils of hunger they didn't
go for us--they were thirty to five--and have a good tuck-in
for once, amazes me now when I think of it. They were big
powerful men, with not much capacity to weigh the consequences,
with courage, with strength, even yet, though their skins
were no longer glossy and their muscles no longer hard.
And I saw that something restraining, one of those human
secrets that baffle probability, had come into play there.
I looked at them with a swift quickening of interest--
not because it occurred to me I might be eaten by them before
Heart of Darkness |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: he asked, so apprehensively that I could not forbear a smile at
Dora's expense. I could assure him that she did not paint, that she
had not painted, at all events, for years, and presently I found
myself in the ridiculous position of using argument to bring a young
man to the Harrises. In the end I prevailed, I know, out of sheer
good nature on Armour's part; he was as innocent as a baby of any
sense of opportunity.
We arranged it for the following Friday, but as luck would have it,
His Excellency sent for me at the very hour; we met the messenger.
I felt myself unlucky, but there was nothing for it but that Armour
should go alone, which he did, with neither diffidence nor alacrity,
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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 Euthydemus by Plato: has such a nature? Not the knowledge which is required in any particular
art; nor again the art of the composer of speeches, who knows how to write
them, but cannot speak them, although he too must be admitted to be a kind
of enchanter of wild animals. Neither is the knowledge which we are
seeking the knowledge of the general. For the general makes over his prey
to the statesman, as the huntsman does to the cook, or the taker of quails
to the keeper of quails; he has not the use of that which he acquires. The
two enquirers, Cleinias and Socrates, are described as wandering about in a
wilderness, vainly searching after the art of life and happiness. At last
they fix upon the kingly art, as having the desired sort of knowledge. But
the kingly art only gives men those goods which are neither good nor evil:
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