| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: scientific curiosities into the life of the common man.... Then
suddenly, in the half-century between 1880 and 1930, it ousted
the steam-engine and took over traction, it ousted every other
form of household heating, abolished distance with the perfected
wireless telephone and the telephotograph....
Section 6
And there was an extraordinary mental resistance to discovery and
invention for at least a hundred years after the scientific
revolution had begun. Each new thing made its way into practice
against a scepticism that amounted at times to hostility. One
writer upon these subjects gives a funny little domestic
The Last War: A World Set Free |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Collection of Beatrix Potter by Beatrix Potter: want in a hurry--like bootlaces,
hair-pins and mutton chops.
Ginger and Pickles were the
people who kept the shop. Ginger
was a yellow tom-cat, and Pickles
was a terrier.
The rabbits were always a little
bit afraid of Pickles.
The shop was also patronized by
mice--only the mice were rather
afraid of Ginger.
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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 Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger: children, ranging in ages form seventeen years to nine months, had to
manage the best way they could. At the end of two weeks, father and
son were set free....During all of this period the farmers of the
community sent in provisions to keep the wife and children from
starving.'' Does this case not sum up in a nutshell the typical
American intelligence confronted with the problem of the too-large
family--industrial slavery tempered with sentimentality!
Let us turn to a young, possibly a more progressive state. Consider
the case of ``California, the Golden'' as it is named by Emma Duke, in
her study of child-labor in the Imperial Valley, ``as fertile as the
Valley of the Nile.''[3] Here, cotton is king, and rich ranchers,
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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 Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: --you laugh?' said the husband.
" 'On my honor, old comrade,' said I, becoming serious again, 'I
confess that I was wrong; I ask your pardon a thousand times, and if
you are not satisfied by my apologies I am ready to give you
satisfaction.'
" 'Oh! it is not you who are wrong, it is I!' he replied coldly.
"Thereupon we all lay down in the room, and before long all were sound
asleep.
"Next morning each one, without rousing his neighbor or seeking
companionship, set out again on his way, with that selfishness which
made our rout one of the most horrible dramas of self-seeking,
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