| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: necessity a far more vast body of females who not only performed the crude
physical toil essential to the existence of society before the introduction
of mechanical methods of production, but who were compelled to labour the
more intensely because there was a parasite class above them to be
maintained by their physical toil. The more the female parasite flourished
of old, in one class or race, the more certainly all women of other classes
or races were compelled to labour only too excessively; and ultimately
these females and their descendants were apt to supplant the more enervated
class or race. In the absence of machinery and of a vast employment of the
motor-forces of nature, parasitism could only threaten a comparatively
small section of any community, and a minute section of the human race as a
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: heaps of the refuse from the ore after the pig-metal is run.
Korl we call it here: a light, porous substance, of a delicate,
waxen, flesh-colored tinge. Out of the blocks of this korl,
Wolfe, in his off-hours from the furnace, had a habit of
chipping and moulding figures,--hideous, fantastic enough, but
sometimes strangely beautiful: even the mill-men saw that,
while they jeered at him. It was a curious fancy in the man,
almost a passion. The few hours for rest he spent hewing and
hacking with his blunt knife, never speaking, until his watch
came again,--working at one figure for months, and, when it was
finished, breaking it to pieces perhaps, in a fit of
Life in the Iron-Mills |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from War and the Future by H. G. Wells: property and handed it out for use and development or not, just
as he thought fit. These ideas are not altogether extinct today.
Only a few days ago I met a magnificent old lady of seventy nine
or eighty, who discoursed upon the wickedness of her gardener in
demanding another shilling a week because of war prices.
She was a valiant and handsome personage. A face that had still
a healthy natural pinkness looked out from under blond curls, and
an elegant and carefully tended hand tossed back some fine old
lace to gesticulate more freely. She had previously charmed her
hearers by sweeping aside certain rumours that were drifting
about.
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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 Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso: To even the paths and make the highways plain,
They filled the pits, and smoothed the rougher ground,
And opened every strait they closed found.
LXXV
They meet no forces gathered by their foe,
No towers defenced with rampire, moat, or wall,
No stream, no wood, no mountain could forslow
Their hasty pace, or stop their march at all;
So when his banks the prince of rivers, Po,
Doth overswell, he breaks with hideous fall
The mossy rocks and trees o'ergrown with age,
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