| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from In Darkest England and The Way Out by General William Booth: waking hours, and in some cases he takes the mother's also. Under some
of the conditions of modern industry, children are not so much born
into a home as they are spawned into the world like fish, with the
results which we see.
The decline of natural affection follows inevitably from the
substitution of the fish relationship for that of the human. A father
who never dandles his child on his knee cannot have a very keen sense
of the responsibilities of paternity. In the rush and pressure of our
competitive City life, thousands of men have not time to be fathers.
Sires, yes; fathers, no. It will take a good deal of schoolmaster to
make up for that change. If this be the case, even with the children
In Darkest England and The Way Out |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: without curiosity, and seemed weary, not with age, but with the
possession of a burdensome secret of existence. Karain, heavy and
proud, had a lofty pose and breathed calmly. It was our first visit,
and we looked about curiously.
The bay was like a bottomless pit of intense light. The circular sheet
of water reflected a luminous sky, and the shores enclosing it made an
opaque ring of earth floating in an emptiness of transparent blue. The
hills, purple and arid, stood out heavily on the sky: their summits
seemed to fade into a coloured tremble as of ascending vapour; their
steep sides were streaked with the green of narrow ravines; at their
foot lay rice-fields, plantain-patches, yellow sands. A torrent wound
Tales of Unrest |
