| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: of the customs that have risen from this manner of spending time.
The boxes in Italy are unlike those of any other country, inasmuch as
that elsewhere the women go to be seen, and that Italian ladies do not
care to make a show of themselves. Each box is long and narrow,
sloping at an angle to the front and to the passage behind. On each
side is a sofa, and at the end stand two armchairs, one for the
mistress of the box, and the other for a lady friend when she brings
one, which she rarely does. Each lady is in fact too much engaged in
her own box to call on others, or to wish to see them; also no one
cares to introduce a rival. An Italian woman almost always reigns
alone in her box; the mothers are not the slaves of their daughters,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche: the spectators often behaved like actors.
Not the neighbour do I teach you, but the friend. Let the friend be the
festival of the earth to you, and a foretaste of the Superman.
I teach you the friend and his overflowing heart. But one must know how to
be a sponge, if one would be loved by overflowing hearts.
I teach you the friend in whom the world standeth complete, a capsule of
the good,--the creating friend, who hath always a complete world to bestow.
And as the world unrolled itself for him, so rolleth it together again for
him in rings, as the growth of good through evil, as the growth of purpose
out of chance.
Let the future and the furthest be the motive of thy to-day; in thy friend
Thus Spake Zarathustra |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: hanging by her right side;--take that opportunity to recollect that the
organs and faculties of perception can, by nothing in this world, be so
aptly typified and explained as by that one thing which Dolly's hand is in
search of.--Your organs are not so dull that I should inform you--'tis an
inch, Sir, of red seal-wax.
When this is melted and dropped upon the letter, if Dolly fumbles too long
for her thimble, till the wax is over hardened, it will not receive the
mark of her thimble from the usual impulse which was wont to imprint it.
Very well. If Dolly's wax, for want of better, is bees-wax, or of a temper
too soft,--tho' it may receive,--it will not hold the impression, how hard
soever Dolly thrusts against it; and last of all, supposing the wax good,
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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 The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: But in all of them I heard a certain sound: a thud-thud-thud,
like the beating of some big engine; and I discovered, from the
flaring of my matches, that a steady current of air set down the
shafts. Further, I threw a scrap of paper into the throat of
one, and, instead of fluttering slowly down, it was at once
sucked swiftly out of sight.
`After a time, too, I came to connect these wells with tall
towers standing here and there upon the slopes; for above them
there was often just such a flicker in the air as one sees on a
hot day above a sun-scorched beach. Putting things together, I
reached a strong suggestion of an extensive system of
The Time Machine |
