| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: oftener meet with stunted forms, due to the directly injurious action of
climate, than we do in proceeding southwards or in descending a mountain.
When we reach the Arctic regions, or snow-capped summits, or absolute
deserts, the struggle for life is almost exclusively with the elements.
That climate acts in main part indirectly by favouring other species, we
may clearly see in the prodigious number of plants in our gardens which can
perfectly well endure our climate, but which never become naturalised, for
they cannot compete with our native plants, nor resist destruction by our
native animals.
When a species, owing to highly favourable circumstances, increases
inordinately in numbers in a small tract, epidemics--at least, this seems
On the Origin of Species |
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 Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: The shadows swayed away from me without a
word. Those men were the ghosts of themselves,
and their weight on a rope could be no more than
the weight of a bunch of ghosts. Indeed, if ever a
sail was hauled up by sheer spiritual strength it
must have been that sail, for, properly speaking,
there was not muscle enough for the task in the
whole ship let alone the miserable lot of us on deck.
Of course, I took the lead in the work myself.
They wandered feebly after me from rope to rope,
stumbling and panting. They toiled like Titans.
The Shadow Line |
