| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Confidence by Henry James: a variety of emotions--surprise, annoyance, embarrassment.
In spite of his effort to think it natural they should go,
he found something precipitate and inexplicable in the manner
of their going, and he declared to himself that one of the party,
at least, had been unkind and ungracious in not giving him a chance
to say good-bye. He took refuge by anticipation, as it were,
in this reflection, whenever, for the next three or four days,
he foresaw himself stopping short, as he had done before,
and asking himself whether he had done an injury to Angela Vivian.
This was an idle and unpractical question, inasmuch as the answer
was not forthcoming; whereas it was quite simple and conclusive
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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 Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: will make it easy to start the war afresh along the whole new
frontier of Poland, and that frontier shuts into Poland so
large an anti-Polish population, that a moment may still
come when desperate Polish statesmen may again choose
war as the least of many threatening evils. Still, for the
moment, Russia's western frontier is comparatively quiet.
Her northern frontier is again the Arctic Sea. Her eastern
frontier is in the neighborhood of the Pacific. The Ukraine
is disorderly, but occupied by no enemy; the only front on
which serious fighting is proceeding is the small semi-circle
north of the Crimea. There Denikin's successor, supported
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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 Time Machine by H. G. Wells: that restless energy, that with us is strength, would become
weakness. Even in our own time certain tendencies and desires,
once necessary to survival, are a constant source of failure.
Physical courage and the love of battle, for instance, are no
great help--may even be hindrances--to a civilized man. And
in a state of physical balance and security, power, intellectual
as well as physical, would be out of place. For countless years
I judged there had been no danger of war or solitary violence, no
danger from wild beasts, no wasting disease to require strength
of constitution, no need of toil. For such a life, what we
should call the weak are as well equipped as the strong, are
The Time Machine |
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 Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: needed point to his parody. This he hung up in the studio over
the oil shop, with a flap of brown paper; by way of a curtain
over it to accentuate its libellous offence.
CHAPTER THE FOURTH
MARION I
As I look back on those days in which we built up the great
Tono-Bungay property out of human hope and credit for bottles and
rent and printing, I see my life as it were arranged in two
parallel columns of unequal width, a wider, more diffused,
eventful and various one which continually broadens out, the
business side of my life, and a narrow, darker and darkling one
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