| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: galloping octo-syllabics in the vein of Scott - and when he had taken
his place on a boulder, near some fairy falls and shaded by a whip of a
tree that was already radiant with new leaves, it still more surprised
him that he should have nothing to write. His heart perhaps beat in
time to some vast indwelling rhythm of the universe. By the time he
came to a corner of the valley and could see the kirk, he had so
lingered by the way that the first psalm was finishing. The nasal
psalmody, full of turns and trills and graceless graces, seemed the
essential voice of the kirk itself upraised in thanksgiving,
"Everything's alive," he said; and again cries it aloud, "thank God,
everything's alive!" He lingered yet a while in the kirk-yard. A tuft
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: requires in reality, that the proletariat should remain within
the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its
hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie.
A second and more practical, but less systematic, form of this
Socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in
the eyes of the working class, by showing that no mere political
reform, but only a change in the material conditions of
existence, in economic relations, could be of any advantage to
them. By changes in the material conditions of existence, this
form of Socialism, however, by no means understands abolition of
the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can be
The Communist Manifesto |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: of genius; and with the ingenuity of love, to dwell more
on the obliging, accommodating purport of the message
than on anything else.
The scheme advanced. Opposition was vain; and as to
Mrs. Norris, he was mistaken in supposing she would wish
to make any. She started no difficulties that were
not talked down in five minutes by her eldest nephew
and niece, who were all-powerful with her; and as the
whole arrangement was to bring very little expense
to anybody, and none at all to herself, as she foresaw
in it all the comforts of hurry, bustle, and importance,
Mansfield Park |
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 Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: him live his. But he knew that there, across the street, so near
that he might have raised his voice and summoned her, he was leaving
the best thing that had come into his life; the one fine and good
thing, outside of David and Lucy. That against its loss he had
nothing but an infatuation that had ruined three lives already, and
was not yet finished.
He stopped and, turning, looked back. He saw the girl bend down
and put a hand on Wallie Sayre's shoulder, and the boy's face
upturned and looking into hers. He shook himself and went on.
After all, that was best. He felt no anger now. She deserved
better than to be used to help a man work out his salvation. She
The Breaking Point |
