| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: of a stone in the pond.
Had Eustacia received the stone full in the bosom
her heart could not have given a more decided thump.
She had thought of the possibility of such a signal in
answer to that which had been unwittingly given by Charley;
but she had not expected it yet. How prompt Wildeve
was! Yet how could he think her capable of deliberately
wishing to renew their assignations now? An impulse to
leave the spot, a desire to stay, struggled within her;
and the desire held its own. More than that it did
not do, for she refrained even from ascending the bank
Return of the Native |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: lines of gravitating power, and hence his hope and conviction that
an effect would and ought to be produced. It must ever be borne in
mind that Faraday's difficulty in dealing with these conceptions was
at bottom the same as that of Newton; that he is in fact trying to
overleap this difficulty, and with it probably the limits prescribed
to the intellect itself.
The idea of lines of magnetic force was suggested to Faraday by the
linear arrangement of iron filings when scattered over a magnet.
He speaks of and illustrates by sketches, the deflection, both
convergent and divergent, of the lines of force, when they pass
respectively through magnetic and diamagnetic bodies. These notions
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer: (2) What had become of the mummy of Mekara? (3) How had the murderer
escaped from a locked room? (4) What was the purpose of the rubber stopper?
(5) Why was Kwee hiding in the conservatory? (6) Was the green mist
a mere subjective hallucination--a figment of Croxted's imagination--
or had he actually seen it?
Until these questions were satisfactorily answered, further progress
was impossible. Nayland Smith frankly admitted that he was out of his depth.
"It looks, on the face of it, more like a case for the Psychical
Research people than for a plain Civil Servant, lately of Mandalay,"
he had said only that morning.
"Sir Lionel Barton really believes that supernatural agencies were
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu |
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 Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy: it. There will be hot work presently, if I mistake not, in the Pere
Blanchard's hut. We shall corner our game there, I'll warrant, for
this impudent Scarlet Pimpernel has had the audacity--or the
stupidity, I hardly know which--to adhere to his original plans. He
has gone to meet de Tournay, St. Just and the other traitors, which
for the moment, I thought, perhaps, he did not intend to do. When we
find them, there will be a band of desperate men at bay. Some of our
men will, I presume, be put HORS DE COMBAT. These royalists are
good swordsmen, and the Englishman is devilish cunning, and looks very
powerful. Still, we shall be five against one at least. You can
follow the cart closely with your men, all along the St. Martin Road,
The Scarlet Pimpernel |
