| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: the police had given him he had been seen hanging about the house
since 'the scene.' It was said that he had tender relations with
the kitchen-maid, and the rest seemed easy to explain. But when
they looked round to ask him for the explanation he was gone--
gone clean out of sight. He had been 'warned' to leave
Wrenfield, and he had taken the warning so to heart that no one
ever laid eyes on him again."
Granice paused. He had dropped into a chair opposite the
lawyer's, and he sat for a moment, his head thrown back, looking
about the familiar room. Everything in it had grown grimacing
and alien, and each strange insistent object seemed craning
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz by L. Frank Baum: quivered and trembled in every limb; but most of them managed to wheel
and escape again to a distance.
Zeb ran and picked up one of the Gargoyles that lay nearest to him.
The top of its head was carved into a crown and the Wizard's bullet
had struck it exactly in the left eye, which was a hard wooden knot.
Half of the bullet stuck in the wood and half stuck out, so it had
been the jar and the sudden noise that had knocked the creature down,
more than the fact that it was really hurt. Before this crowned
Gargoyle had recovered himself Zeb had wound a strap several times
around its body, confining its wings and arms so that it could not
move. Then, having tied the wooden creature securely, the boy buckled
Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: my ear, that she secretly admits a man into the house by night, when she
always sends me away modestly before evening? No, it cannot be true! It
is a lie! A base, slanderous lie! Clara is as innocent as I am wretched.--She
has rejected me, has thrust me from her heart--and shall I live on thus? I
cannot, I will not endure it. Already my native land is convulsed by
internal strife, and do I perish abjectly amid the tumult? I will not endure
it! When the trumpet sounds, when a shot falls, it thrills through my bone
and marrow! But, alas, it does not rouse me! It does not summon me to
join the onslaught, to rescue, to dare.--Wretched, degrading position!
Better end it at once! Not long ago, I threw myself into the water; I sank --
but nature in her agony was too strong for me; I felt that I could swim, and
Egmont |
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 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: will lose its political character. Political power, properly so
called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing
another. If the proletariat during its contest with the
bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to
organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it
makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force
the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these
conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of
class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have
abolished its own supremacy as a class.
In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and
The Communist Manifesto |
