| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: joyous morning, and men and women looked at the sky and smiled
as they went about their work or their pleasure, and the wind
blew as blithely as upon the meadows and the scented gorse. But
somehow or other I got out of the bustle and the gaiety, and
found myself walking slowly along a quiet, dull street, where
there seemed to be no sunshine and no air, and where the few
foot-passengers loitered as they walked, and hung indecisively
about corners and archways. I walked along, hardly knowing
where I was going or what I did there, but feeling impelled, as
one sometimes is, to explore still further, with a vague idea of
reaching some unknown goal. Thus I forged up the street, noting
The Great God Pan |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Salome by Oscar Wilde: paupieres tremblantes? . . . C'est etrange que le mari de ma mere me
regarde comme cela. Je ne sais pas ce que cela veut dire . . . Au
fait, si, je le sais.
LE JEUNE SYRIEN. Vous venez de quitter le festin, princesse?
SALOME. Comme l'air est frais ici! Enfin, ici on respire! Le-
dedans il y a des Juifs de Jerusalem qui se dechirent e cause de
leurs ridicules ceremonies, et des barbares qui boivent toujours et
jettent leur vin sur les dalles, et des Grecs de Smyrne avec leurs
yeux peints et leurs joues fardees, et leurs cheveux frises en
spirales, et des Egyptiens, silencieux, subtils, avec leurs ongles
de jade et leurs manteaux bruns, et des Romains avec leur brutalite,
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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 Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: popular; there were men in the town who told about trying to save
him from himself. He had been extravagant, but he had also been
generous. He had been "a good kid," until liberty and money got
hold of him. There had been more than one man in the sheriff's
posse who hadn't wanted to find him.
He was tempted to turn back. The mountains surrounded him, somber
and majestically still. They made him feel infinitely small and
rather impertinent, as though he had come to penetrate the secrets
they never yielded. He had almost to fight a conviction that they
were hostile.
After an hour or so he determined to go on. Let them throw him
The Breaking Point |
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 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: class-interest, one frontier and one customs-tariff. The
bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has
created more massive and more colossal productive forces than
have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's
forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry
and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs,
clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of
rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground -- what
earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive
forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?
We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose
The Communist Manifesto |
