| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: he attached no importance to changes in fashion. Who could tell what
was going to last--in literature or indeed in anything else?
"Let us enjoy what we do enjoy," he said. His integrity seemed to Mrs
Ramsay quite admirable. He never seemed for a moment to think, But how
does this affect me? But then if you had the other temperament, which
must have praise, which must have encouragement, naturally you began
(and she knew that Mr Ramsay was beginning) to be uneasy; to want
somebody to say, Oh, but your work will last, Mr Ramsay, or something
like that. He showed his uneasiness quite clearly now by saying, with
some irritation, that, anyhow, Scott (or was it Shakespeare ?) would
last him his lifetime. He said it irritably. Everybody, she thought,
To the Lighthouse |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Proposed Roads To Freedom by Bertrand Russell: full of preventable evils than it is at present. But
in the past such men have, as a rule, failed to interest
the very victims of the injustices which they wished
to remedy. The more unfortunate sections of the
population have been ignorant, apathetic from excess
of toil and weariness, timorous through the imminent
danger of immediate punishment by the holders of
power, and morally unreliable owing to the loss of
self-respect resulting from their degradation. To
create among such classes any conscious, deliberate
effort after general amelioration might have seemed
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