| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens: as carelessly as if he had been in full possession of his sight,
'if you make that row, you'll find that the captain's very far from
joking, and so I tell you.'
'He's got his eyes on me!' cried Stagg, stopping short on his way
back, and affecting to screen his face with the bottle. 'I feel
'em though I can't see 'em. Take 'em off, noble captain. Remove
'em, for they pierce like gimlets.'
Mr Tappertit smiled grimly at his comrade; and twisting out one
more look--a kind of ocular screw--under the influence of which the
blind man feigned to undergo great anguish and torture, bade him,
in a softened tone, approach, and hold his peace.
Barnaby Rudge |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Herbert West: Reanimator by H. P. Lovecraft: Moreover, he had in the past secretly studied the theory of reanimation
to some extent under West. Major Sir Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee,
D.S.O., was the greatest surgeon in our division, and had been
hastily assigned to the St. Eloi sector when news of the heavy
fighting reached headquarters. He had come in an aeroplane piloted
by the intrepid Lieut. Ronald Hill, only to be shot down when
directly over his destination. The fall had been spectacular and
awful; Hill was unrecognisable afterward, but the wreck yielded
up the great surgeon in a nearly decapitated but otherwise intact
condition. West had greedily seized the lifeless thing which had
once been his friend and fellow-scholar; and I shuddered when
Herbert West: Reanimator |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Adieu by Honore de Balzac: have put forth to save himself.
Presently he reached a slight declivity at the foot of which, in a
spot sheltered from the enemy's balls, he had stationed the carriage,
containing a young woman, the companion of his childhood, the being
most dear to him on earth. At a few steps distant from the vehicle he
now found a company of some thirty stragglers collected around an
immense fire, which they were feeding with planks, caisson covers,
wheels, and broken carriages. These soldiers were, no doubt, the last
comers of that crowd who, from the base of the hill of Studzianka to
the fatal river, formed an ocean of heads intermingled with fires and
huts,--a living sea, swayed by motions that were almost imperceptible,
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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: their pen is broken, their law torn to pieces in the name of Religion,
of Family, of Property, and of Order. Bourgeois, fanatic on the point
of "Order," are shot down on their own balconies by drunken soldiers,
forfeit their family property, and their houses are bombarded for
pastime--all in the name of Property, of Family, of Religion, and of
Order. Finally, the refuse of bourgeois society constitutes the "holy
phalanx of Order," and the hero Crapulinsky makes his entry into the
Tuileries as the "Savior of Society."
II
Let us resume the thread of events.
The history of the Constitutional National Assembly from the June days
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