| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tarzan the Untamed by Edgar Rice Burroughs: "We would not get far," said the girl, a slight note of hope-
lessness in her tone. "Entirely unarmed as we are, it would
be little less than a miracle if we covered even a small fraction
of the distance."
"But we are not unarmed," replied the man. "I have an
extra pistol here, that the beggars didn't discover," and, re-
moving the cover of a compartment, he drew forth an auto-
matic.
Bertha Kircher leaned back in her seat and laughed aloud,
a mirthless, half-hysterical laugh. "That popgun!" she ex-
claimed. "What earthly good would it do other than to in-
Tarzan the Untamed |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: sadness could be overcome. Tolstoy does well to talk of it as
THAT BY WHICH MEN LIVE; for that is exactly what it is, a
stimulus, an excitement, a faith, a force that re-infuses the
positive willingness to live, even in full presence of the evil
perceptions that erewhile made life seem unbearable. For
Tolstoy's perceptions of evil appear within their sphere to have
remained unmodified. His later works show him implacable to the
whole system of official values: the ignobility of fashionable
life; the infamies of empire; the spuriousness of the church, the
vain conceit of the professions; the meannesses and cruelties
that go with great success; and every other pompous crime and
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