| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin: had exaggerated and conventionalized a perfectly natural action,
so as to lose sight of its original meaning. There is a curious
mention of this gesture by Strabo." Mr. Washington Matthews
informs me that, with the Dakota Indians of North America,
contempt is shown not only by movements of the face, such as those
above described, but "conventionally, by the hand being closed
and held near the breast, then, as the forearm is suddenly extended,
the hand is opened and the fingers separated from each other.
If the person at whose expense the sign is made is present, the hand
is moved towards him, and the head sometimes averted from him."
This sudden extension and opening of the hand perhaps indicates
Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: become more and more intellectual and less and less purely mechanical, as
perfected machinery takes the place of crude human exertion; and that
therefore if woman is to be saved from degeneration and parasitism, and the
body of humanity from arrest, she must receive a training which will
cultivate all the intellectual and all the physical faculties with which
she is endowed, and be allowed freely to employ them; nevertheless, would
it not be possible, and perhaps be well, that a dividing line of some kind
should be drawn between the occupations of men and of women? Would it not,
for example, be possible that woman should retain agriculture, textile
manufacture, trade, domestic management, the education of youth, and
medicine, in addition to child-bearing, as her exclusive fields of toil;
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: a certain validity, and that there might be such an interlacement
of poor Peter's former and latter intentions as to create endless
"lawing" before anybody came by their own--an inconvenience which
would have at least the advantage of going all round. Hence the
brothers showed a thoroughly neutral gravity as they re-entered
with Mr. Standish; but Solomon took out his white handkerchief again
with a sense that in any case there would be affecting passages,
and crying at funerals, however dry, was customarily served up in lawn.
Perhaps the person who felt the most throbbing excitement at this
moment was Mary Garth, in the consciousness that it was she
who had virtually determined the production of this second will,
Middlemarch |
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 Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: law."
The Prince relapsed into thought; until presently there entered a
young tchinovnik. Portfolio in hand, this official stood waiting
respectfully. Care and hard work had already imprinted their insignia
upon his fresh young face; for evidently he had not been in the
Service for nothing. As a matter of fact, his greatest joy was to
labour at a tangled case, and successfully to unravel it.
[At this point a long hiatus occurs in the original.]
"I will send corn to the localities where famine is worst," said
Murazov, "for I understand that sort of work better than do the
tchinovniks, and will personally see to the needs of each person.
Dead Souls |
