| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Herland by Charlotte Gilman: and theirs. I tried to.
"Look here, my dear," I said to her. "If you are really
going to my country with me, you've got to be prepared for a good
many shocks. It's not as beautiful as this--the cities, I mean,
the civilized parts--of course the wild country is."
"I shall enjoy it all," she said, her eyes starry with hope.
"I understand it's not like ours. I can see how monotonous our quiet
life must seem to you, how much more stirring yours must be.
It must be like the biological change you told me about when the
second sex was introduced--a far greater movement, constant
change, with new possibilities of growth."
Herland |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Twilight Land by Howard Pyle: all that it was possible for man to know, he said to himself,
"Now I will take my ease and enjoy my life." So he called the
Demon Zadok to him, and said to the monster, "I have read in my
books that there is a treasure that was one time hidden by the
ancient kings of Egypt--a treasure such as the eyes of man never
saw before or since their day. Is that true?"
"It is true," said the Demon.
"Then I command thee to take me to that treasure and to show it
to me," said Aben Hassen the Wise.
"It shall be done," said the Demon; and thereupon he caught up
the Wise Man and transported him across mountain and valley,
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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 Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: wonder. Adam must have been some such man as he, when the Lord
gave him `dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of
the air.' "
The hand paused courteously a moment, then resumed its quick,
cool movement over the page. He was not baffled.
"If there were such a reality as mastership, that man was born to
rule. Pike will find him harder to cheat than me, when he takes
possession here."
She looked up now.
"He came here to take my place in the mills,--buy me
out,--articles will be signed in a day or two. I know what you
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
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 Parmenides by Plato: 'effect' are very far from representing to us the continuity or the
complexity of nature or the different modes or degrees in which phenomena
are connected. Yet we accept them as the best expression which we have of
the correlation of forces or objects. We see that the term 'law' is a mere
abstraction, under which laws of matter and of mind, the law of nature and
the law of the land are included, and some of these uses of the word are
confusing, because they introduce into one sphere of thought associations
which belong to another; for example, order or sequence is apt to be
confounded with external compulsion and the internal workings of the mind
with their material antecedents. Yet none of them can be dispensed with;
we can only be on our guard against the error or confusion which arises out
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