| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: happiness to these deserving people. When I slept or was absent,
the forms of the venerable blind father, the gentle Agatha, and the
excellent Felix flitted before me. I looked upon them as superior
beings who would be the arbiters of my future destiny. I formed in
my imagination a thousand pictures of presenting myself to them,
and their reception of me. I imagined that they would be disgusted,
until, by my gentle demeanour and onciliating words, I should first
win their favour and afterwards their love.
"These thoughts exhilarated me and led me to apply with fresh ardour
to the acquiring the art of language. My organs were indeed harsh,
but supple; and although my voice was very unlike the soft music of their
Frankenstein |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: globe - all the same shape they are down there, and all graded to
the relative size, only each State and realm and island is a good
many billion times bigger here than it is below. There goes
another blast."
"What is that one for?"
"That is only another fort answering the first one. They each fire
eleven hundred and one thunder blasts at a single dash - it is the
usual salute for an eleventh-hour guest; a hundred for each hour
and an extra one for the guest's sex; if it was a woman we would
know it by their leaving off the extra gun."
"How do we know there's eleven hundred and one, Sandy, when they
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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 Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: to judge that it is immortal.
PART VI
Three years have now elapsed since I finished the treatise containing all
these matters; and I was beginning to revise it, with the view to put it
into the hands of a printer, when I learned that persons to whom I greatly
defer, and whose authority over my actions is hardly less influential than
is my own reason over my thoughts, had condemned a certain doctrine in
physics, published a short time previously by another individual to which
I will not say that I adhered, but only that, previously to their censure
I had observed in it nothing which I could imagine to be prejudicial
either to religion or to the state, and nothing therefore which would have
Reason Discourse |
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 Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: fears for the event of the campaign. But I ventur'd only to say,
"To be sure, sir, if you arrive well before Duquesne, with these
fine troops, so well provided with artillery, that place not yet
compleatly fortified, and as we hear with no very strong garrison,
can probably make but a short resistance. The only danger I apprehend
of obstruction to your march is from ambuscades of Indians, who,
by constant practice, are dexterous in laying and executing them;
and the slender line, near four miles long, which your army must make,
may expose it to be attack'd by surprise in its flanks, and to be
cut like a thread into several pieces, which, from their distance,
can not come up in time to support each other."
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
