| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: and had nearly perished in a drift. All that they knew how to do
was to hold the frozen fingers near the fire, and so little Stanislovas
spent most of the day dancing about in horrible agony, till Jurgis
flew into a passion of nervous rage and swore like a madman, declaring
that he would kill him if he did not stop. All that day and night
the family was half-crazed with fear that Ona and the boy had lost
their places; and in the morning they set out earlier than ever,
after the little fellow had been beaten with a stick by Jurgis.
There could be no trifling in a case like this, it was a matter of
life and death; little Stanislovas could not be expected to realize
that he might a great deal better freeze in the snowdrift than lose
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: those fluxional images rigid, he rebelled. He warns Phillips
moreover, that from first to last, 'he merely threw out as matter
for speculation the vague impressions of his mind; for he gave
nothing as the result of sufficient consideration, or as the settled
conviction, or even probable conclusion at which he had arrived.'
The gist of this communication is that gravitating force acts in
lines across space, and that the vibrations of light and radiant
heat consist in the tremors of these lines of force. 'This notion,'
he says, 'as far as it is admitted, will dispense with the ether,
which, in another view is supposed to be the medium in which these
vibrations take place.' And he adds further on, that his view
|
