| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: child-bearing to become so diminished that, even in the lives of those
among us who are child-bearers, it shall fill no more than half a dozen
years out of the three-score-and-ten of human life?--then we demand that an
additional outlet be ours which shall fill up with dignity and value the
tale of the years not so employed. Is intellectual labour to take ever and
increasingly the place of crude muscular exertion in the labour of life?--
then we demand for ourselves that culture and the freedom of action which
alone can yield us the knowledge of life and the intellectual vigour and
strength which will enable us to undertake the same share of mental which
we have borne in the past in physical labours of life. Are the rulers of
the race to be no more its kings and queens, but the mass of the peoples?--
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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 Door in the Wall, et. al. by H. G. Wells: were upstairs. Perhaps it was a bit thoughtless. But possibly
some of them were out.
"When I came back the thing was just where I left it, among
the white-hot coals. The explosive hadn't burst the case. And
then I had a problem to face. You know time is an important
element in crystallisation. If you hurry the process the crystals
are small--it is only by prolonged standing that they grow to any
size. I resolved to let this apparatus cool for two years, letting
the temperature go down slowly during the time. And I was now
quite out of money; and with a big fire and the rent of my room, as
well as my hunger to satisfy, I had scarcely a penny in the world.
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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 The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: est; lucet nocturnis ignibus, chorus Aegipanum undique
personatur: audiuntur et cantus tibiarum, et tinnitus cymbalorum
per oram maritimam.
On the third page was a design which made Villiers
start and look up at Austin; he was gazing abstractedly out of
the window. Villiers turned page after page, absorbed, in spite
of himself, in the frightful Walpurgis Night of evil, strange
monstrous evil, that the dead artist had set forth in hard black
and white. The figures of Fauns and Satyrs and Aegipans danced
before his eyes, the darkness of the thicket, the dance on the
mountain-top, the scenes by lonely shores, in green vineyards,
The Great God Pan |
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 Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: up the furze-hook and looked at it, and put it down again,
and then she looked at the faggot-bonds; and then she
went away, and walked across to me, and blowed her breath
very hard, like this. We walked on together, she and I,
and I talked to her and she talked to me a bit, but not much,
because she couldn't blow her breath."
"O!" murmured Clym, in a low tone, and bowed his head.
"Let's have more," he said.
"She couldn't talk much, and she couldn't walk; and her
face was, O so queer!"
"How was her face?"
Return of the Native |
