| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the
remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only
at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old
wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new
wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant
lands and climes. In place of the old local and national
seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every
direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in
material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual
creations of individual nations become common property. National
one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more
The Communist Manifesto |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: the middle ages of Europe.
These considerations, then, will enable us to understand first how
it was that, radical and unscrupulous reformers as the Greek
political theorists were, yet, their end once attained, no modern
conservatives raised such outcry against the slightest innovation.
Even acknowledged improvements in such things as the games of
children or the modes of music were regarded by them with feelings
of extreme apprehension as the herald of the DRAPEAU ROUGE of
reform. And secondly, it will show us how it was that Polybius
found his ideal in the commonwealth of Rome, and Aristotle, like
Mr. Bright, in the middle classes. Polybius, however, is not
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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 In Darkest England and The Way Out by General William Booth: This task will wear away your lives and the lives of your sons and
grandsons; but for what purpose, if not for tasks like this, were lives
given to men? Ye shall cease to count your thousand-pound scalps;
the noble of you shall cease! Nay, the very scalps, as I say,
will not long be left, if you count only these. Ye shall cease wholly
to be barbarous vulturous Chactaws, and become noble European
nineteenth-century men. Ye shall know that Mammon, in never such gigs
and flunky 'respectabilities' in not the alone God; that of himself he
is but a devil and even a brute-god.
"Difficult? Yes, it will be difficult. The short-fibre cotton; that,
too, was difficult. The waste-cotton shrub, long useless, disobedient
In Darkest England and The Way Out |
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 Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: CHAPTER IV. The Magistrate in the Luggage Van
The city of Winchester is famed for a cathedral, a bishop--but he
was unfortunately killed some years ago while riding--a public
school, a considerable assortment of the military, and the
deliberate passage of the trains of the London and South-Western
line. These and many similar associations would have doubtless
crowded on the mind of Joseph Finsbury; but his spirit had at
that time flitted from the railway compartment to a heaven of
populous lecture-halls and endless oratory. His body, in the
meanwhile, lay doubled on the cushions, the forage-cap rakishly
tilted back after the fashion of those that lie in wait for
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