| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: they couldn't be, in so huddled a hole, particularly quick; but she
found her account in the slowness--she certainly could bear it if
HE could. The great pang was that just thereabouts post-offices
were so awfully thick. She was always seeing him in imagination in
other places and with other girls. But she would defy any other
girl to follow him as she followed. And though they weren't, for
so many reasons, quick at Cocker's, she could hurry for him when,
through an intimation light as air, she gathered that he was
pressed.
When hurry was, better still, impossible, it was because of the
pleasantest thing of all, the particular element of their contact--
|
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 On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: difficulty sufficient to overthrow my whole theory. I must premise, that I
have nothing to do with the origin of the primary mental powers, any more
than I have with that of life itself. We are concerned only with the
diversities of instinct and of the other mental qualities of animals within
the same class.
I will not attempt any definition of instinct. It would be easy to show
that several distinct mental actions are commonly embraced by this term;
but every one understands what is meant, when it is said that instinct
impels the cuckoo to migrate and to lay her eggs in other birds' nests. An
action, which we ourselves should require experience to enable us to
perform, when performed by an animal, more especially by a very young one,
On the Origin of Species |
