| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: see why she shouldn't have a good time because other people didn't;
they would have a good time, she was sure, if she didn't. She said
that if we did give up everything we had to other people, they
wouldn't very likely know what to do with it. She asked if we were
so fond of work-people, why we didn't go and live among them, and
expressed the inflexible persuasion that if we HAD socialism,
everything would be just the same again in ten years' time. She
also threw upon us the imputation of ingratitude for a beautiful
world by saying that so far as she was concerned she didn't want to
upset everything. She was contented with things as they were, thank
you.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: do, namely, that it has a "necessary" and "calculable" course,
NOT, however, because laws obtain in it, but because they are
absolutely LACKING, and every power effects its ultimate
consequences every moment. Granted that this also is only
interpretation--and you will be eager enough to make this
objection?--well, so much the better.
23. All psychology hitherto has run aground on moral prejudices
and timidities, it has not dared to launch out into the depths.
In so far as it is allowable to recognize in that which has
hitherto been written, evidence of that which has hitherto been
kept silent, it seems as if nobody had yet harboured the notion
Beyond Good and Evil |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: Paris was almost deserted in those days. But when the
fortifications were pulled down, and the market gardens beyond
the line of the boulevards began to fill with houses, then the
d'Uzes family left their fine mansion, and in our time it was
occupied by a banker. Later still, the noblesse began to find
themselves out of their element among shopkeepers, left the Place
Royale and the centre of Paris for good, and crossed the river to
breathe freely in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where palaces were
reared already about the great hotel built by Louis XIV for the
Duc de Maine--the Benjamin among his legitimated offspring. And
indeed, for people accustomed to a stately life, can there be
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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 When the World Shook by H. Rider Haggard: entrance to the companion so faithfully secured that we could not
by any means get out. We knocked and shouted, but no one
answered. My belief is that at this time everyone on the yacht
except ourselves had been washed away and drowned.
Then we returned to the saloon, which, except for a little
water trickling about the floor, was marvelously dry, and, being
hungry, retrieved some bits of food and biscuit from its corners
and ate. At this moment the cyclone began to blow again worse
than ever, but it seemed to us, from another direction, and
before it sped our poor derelict barque. It blew all day till for
my part I grew utterly weary and even longed for the inevitable
When the World Shook |
