| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: poured into Britain, and the English have carried this drift on
around the world. Retreating before stronger breeds, hungry and
voracious, the Eskimo has drifted to the inhospitable polar
regions, the Pigmy to the fever-rotten jungles of Africa. And in
this day the drift of the races continues, whether it be of
Chinese into the Philippines and the Malay Peninsula, of Europeans
to the United States or of Americans to the wheat-lands of
Manitoba and the Northwest.
Perhaps most amazing has been the South Sea Drift. Blind,
fortuitous, precarious as no other drift has been, nevertheless
the islands in that waste of ocean have received drift after drift
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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 Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: A hearty appreciation of the things of others is still one of their
most winning traits. What they took they grafted bodily upon their
ancestral tree, which in consequence came to present a most
unnaturally diversified appearance. For though not unlike other
nations in wishing to borrow, if their zeal in the matter was
slightly excessive, they were peculiar in that they never assimilated
what they took. They simply inserted it upon the already existing
growth. There it remained, and throve, and blossomed, nourished by
that indigenous Japanese sap, taste. But like grafts generally,
the foreign boughs were not much modified by their new life-blood,
nor was the tree in its turn at all affected by them. Connected with
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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 Jungle by Upton Sinclair: to enable them to break the grip of their teamsters' union.
In a work thus carried out, not much thought was given to the
welfare of the laborers. On an average, the tunneling cost a
life a day and several manglings; it was seldom, however, that
more than a dozen or two men heard of any one accident. The work
was all done by the new boring machinery, with as little blasting
as possible; but there would be falling rocks and crushed
supports, and premature explosions--and in addition all the
dangers of railroading. So it was that one night, as Jurgis was
on his way out with his gang, an engine and a loaded car dashed
round one of the innumerable right-angle branches and struck him
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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 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: of heaven, could redeem my soul from woe; the very accents of love
were ineffectual. I was encompassed by a cloud which no beneficial
influence could penetrate. The wounded deer dragging its fainting
limbs to some untrodden brake, there to gaze upon the arrow which
had pierced it, and to die, was but a type of me.
Sometimes I could cope with the sullen despair that overwhelmed me,
but sometimes the whirlwind passions of my soul drove me to seek,
by bodily exercise and by change of place, some relief from my
intolerable sensations. It was during an access of this kind that
I suddenly left my home, and bending my steps towards the near
Alpine valleys, sought in the magnificence, the eternity of such
Frankenstein |
