| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: clearings, with streets like avenues cut through thick timber for
the convenience of trade. I am thinking now of river ports I have
seen - of Antwerp, for instance; of Nantes or Bordeaux, or even old
Rouen, where the night-watchmen of ships, elbows on rail, gaze at
shop-windows and brilliant cafes, and see the audience go in and
come out of the opera-house. But London, the oldest and greatest
of river ports, does not possess as much as a hundred yards of open
quays upon its river front. Dark and impenetrable at night, like
the face of a forest, is the London waterside. It is the waterside
of watersides, where only one aspect of the world's life can be
seen, and only one kind of men toils on the edge of the stream.
The Mirror of the Sea |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: ordinarily applied by us to the division of the heavens, may be elucidated
by the following supposition:--if a person were to stand in that part of
the universe which is the appointed place of fire, and where there is the
great mass of fire to which fiery bodies gather--if, I say, he were to
ascend thither, and, having the power to do this, were to abstract
particles of fire and put them in scales and weigh them, and then, raising
the balance, were to draw the fire by force towards the uncongenial element
of the air, it would be very evident that he could compel the smaller mass
more readily than the larger; for when two things are simultaneously raised
by one and the same power, the smaller body must necessarily yield to the
superior power with less reluctance than the larger; and the larger body is
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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 First Men In The Moon by H. G. Wells: but at the time my question took you by surprise, and you felt you ought
to have something to look like a motive. Really you conducted researches
because you had to. It's your twist."
"Perhaps it is -"
"It isn't one man in a million has that twist. Most men want - well,
various things, but very few want knowledge for its own sake. I don't, I
know perfectly well. Now, these Selenites seem to be a driving, busy sort
of being, but how do you know that even the most intelligent will take an
interest in us or our world? I don't believe they'll even know we have a
world. They never come out at night - they'd freeze if they did. They've
probably never seen any heavenly body at all except the blazing sun. How
The First Men In The Moon |
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 Glasses by Henry James: imitation of response to some homage. Dawling and I looked at each
other again; the tears came into his eyes. She was playing at
perfection still, and her misfortune only simplified the process.
I recognised that this was as near as I should ever come, certainly
as I should come that night, to pressing on her misfortune.
Neither of us would name it more than we were doing then, and Flora
would never name it at all. Little by little I saw that what had
occurred was, strange as it might appear, the best thing for her
happiness. The question was now only of her beauty and her being
seen and marvelled at; with Dawling to do for her everything in
life her activity was limited to that. Such an activity was all
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