| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Philosophy 4 by Owen Wister: errands, you would have supposed them under some crying call of
obligation, or else to be escaping from justice.
Twenty minutes later they were seated behind the black gelding and bound
on their journey in search of the bird-in-Hand. Their notes in
Philosophy 4 were stowed under the buggy-seat.
"Did Oscar see you?" Bertie inquired.
"Not he," cried Billy, joyously.
"Oscar will wonder," said Bertie; and he gave the black gelding a
triumphant touch with the whip.
You see, it was Oscar that had made them run go; or, rather, it was Duty
and Fate walking in Oscar's displeasing likeness. Nothing easier,
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll: him or Sylvie. "I think the best way will be for you to weed the beds,
while I sort out these pebbles, ready to mark the walks with."
"That's it!" cried Bruno. "And I'll tell oo about the caterpillars
while we work."
"Ah, let's hear about the caterpillars," I said, as I drew the pebbles
together into a heap and began dividing them into colours.
And Bruno went on in a low, rapid tone, more as if he were talking to
himself. "Yesterday I saw two little caterpillars, when I was sitting
by the brook, just where oo go into the wood. They were quite green,
and they had yellow eyes, and they didn't see me. And one of them had
got a moth's wing to carry--a great brown moth's wing, oo know, all dry,
Sylvie and Bruno |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: everybody else; speak rightly or wrongly of things, of men,
literature, and the fine arts; have ever in their mouth the Pitt and
Coburg of each year; interrupt a conversation with a pun, turn into
ridicule science and the /savant/; despise all things which they do
not know or which they fear; set themselves above all by constituting
themselves the supreme judges of all. They would all hoax their
fathers, and be ready to shed crocodile tears upon their mothers'
breasts; but generally they believe in nothing, blaspheme women, or
play at modesty, and in reality are led by some old woman or an evil
courtesan. They are all equally eaten to the bone with calculation,
with depravity, with a brutal lust to succeed, and if you plumbed for
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
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 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the
working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of
ruling as to win the battle of democracy.
The proletariat will use its political supremacy top wrest, by
degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all
instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the
proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the
total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by
means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the
conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures,
The Communist Manifesto |
