| 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: seemed to be a quality of irreverence in applying religion to the
developments of every day. This strange suspension of religion
lasted over into the beginnings of the new age. It was the clear
vision of Marcus Karenin much more than any other contemporary
influence which brought it back into the texture of human life.
He saw religion without hallucinations, without superstitious
reverence, as a common thing as necessary as food and air, as
land and energy to the life of man and the well-being of the
Republic. He saw that indeed it had already percolated away from
the temples and hierarchies and symbols in which men had sought
to imprison it, that it was already at work anonymously and
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 Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: speak of Spirit and the Good as Plato spoke of them; indeed one
might ask, as a physician: "How did such a malady attack that
finest product of antiquity, Plato? Had the wicked Socrates
really corrupted him? Was Socrates after all a corrupter of
youths, and deserved his hemlock?" But the struggle against
Plato, or--to speak plainer, and for the "people"--the struggle
against the ecclesiastical oppression of millenniums of
Christianity (FOR CHRISITIANITY IS PLATONISM FOR THE "PEOPLE"),
produced in Europe a magnificent tension of soul, such as had not
existed anywhere previously; with such a tensely strained bow one
can now aim at the furthest goals. As a matter of fact, the
Beyond Good and Evil |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Blix by Frank Norris: outside, first heard the story of "In Defiance of Authority."
Captain Jack began it with his experience as a restaurant keeper
during the boom days in Seattle, Washington. He told them how he
was the cashier of a dining-saloon whose daily net profits
exceeded eight hundred dollars; how its proprietor suddenly died,
and how he, Captain Jack, continued the management of the
restaurant pending a settlement of the proprietor's affairs and an
appearance of heirs; how in the confusion and excitement of the
boom no settlement was ever made; and how, no heirs appearing, he
assumed charge of the establishment himself, paying bills, making
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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 Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: lying layers of society gets into revolutionary fermentation, it enters
into alliance therewith and thus shares all the defeats which the
several parties successively suffer. But these succeeding blows become
ever weaker the more generally they are distributed over the whole
surface of society. The more important leaders of the Proletariat, in
its councils, and the press, fall one after another victims of the
courts, and ever more questionable figures step to the front. It partly
throws itself it upon doctrinaire experiments, "co-operative banking"
and "labor exchange" schemes; in other words, movements, in which it
goes into movements in which it gives up the task of revolutionizing the
old world with its own large collective weapons and on the contrary,
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