| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: conception. To begin with, there are certain preliminary particles
which are simply honorific, serving no other purpose whatsoever.
In addition to these there are for every action a small infinity of
verbs, each sacred to a different degree of respect. For instance,
to our verb "to give" corresponds a complete social scale of
Japanese verbs, each conveying the idea a shade more politely than
its predecessor; only the very lowest meaning anything so plebeian as
simply "to give." Sets of laudatory or depreciatory adjectives are
employed in the same way. Lastly, the word for "is," which strictly
means "exists," expresses this existence under three different
forms,--in a matter-of-fact, a flowing, or an inflated style;
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: and the terrible Domitian, Isidore Baudoyer was nothing more than a
political office-holder, of little ability as head of his department,
a cut-and-dried routine man, who concealed the fact that he was a
flabby cipher by so ponderous a personality that no scalpel could cut
deep enough to let the operator see into him. His severe studies, in
which he had shown the patience and sagacity of an ox, and his square
head, deceived his parents, who firmly believed him an extraordinary
man. Pedantic and hypercritical, meddlesome and fault-finding, he was
a terror to the clerks under him, whom he worried in their work,
enforcing the rules rigorously, and arriving himself with such
terrible punctuality that not one of them dared to be a moment late.
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: that I am not like-minded with Euthydemus, but one of the other sort, who,
as you were saying, would rather be refuted by such arguments than use them
in refutation of others. And though I may appear ridiculous in venturing
to advise you, I think that you may as well hear what was said to me by a
man of very considerable pretensions--he was a professor of legal oratory--
who came away from you while I was walking up and down. 'Crito,' said he
to me, 'are you giving no attention to these wise men?' 'No, indeed,' I
said to him; 'I could not get within hearing of them--there was such a
crowd.' 'You would have heard something worth hearing if you had.' 'What
was that?' I said. 'You would have heard the greatest masters of the art
of rhetoric discoursing.' 'And what did you think of them?' I said. 'What
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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 The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: disappeared.
`"Communism," said I to myself.
`And on the heels of that came another thought. I looked at
the half-dozen little figures that were following me. Then, in a
flash, I perceived that all had the same form of costume, the
same soft hairless visage, and the same girlish rotundity of
limb. It may seem strange, perhaps, that I had not noticed this
before. But everything was so strange. Now, I saw the fact
plainly enough. In costume, and in all the differences of
texture and bearing that now mark off the sexes from each other,
these people of the future were alike. And the children seemed
The Time Machine |
