| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Camille by Alexandre Dumas: hour, I was acting the Othello, spying upon her, and thinking to
punish her by seeing her no more. But, on the contrary, she ought
to be enchanted at this separation. She ought to find me
supremely foolish, and her silence was not even that of rancour;
it was contempt.
I might have made Marguerite a present which would leave no doubt
as to my generosity and permit me to feel properly quits of her,
as of a kept woman, but I should have felt that I was offending
by the least appearance of trafficking, if not the love which she
had for me, at all events the love which I had for her, and since
this love was so pure that it could admit no division, it could
Camille |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from In Darkest England and The Way Out by General William Booth: spread disease and death.
An awful picture, truly, but one which is to me irradiated with the
love-light which shone in the eyes of "Em's serious, sweet, saintlike
face."
Here is my second. It was written by a Journalist who had just
witnessed the scene in Whitechapel. He writes: --
I had just passed Mr. Barnett's church when I was stopped by a small
crowd at a street corner. There were about thirty or forty men, women,
and children standing loosely together, some others were lounging on
the opposite side of the street round the door of a public-house.
In the centre of the crowd was a plain-looking little woman in
In Darkest England and The Way Out |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: know good from evil in tendency, or protect citizens against shocks to
their opinions and convictions, moral, political or religious: in
other words it must not persecute doctrines of any kind, or what is
called bad taste, and must insist on all persons facing such shocks as
they face frosty weather or any of the other disagreeable, dangerous,
or bracing incidents of freedom. The expediency of Toleration has
been forced on us by the fact that progressive enlightenment depends
on a fair hearing for doctrines which at first appear seditious,
blasphemous, and immoral, and which deeply shock people who never
think originally, thought being with them merely a habit and an echo.
The deeper ground for Toleration is the nature of creation, which, as
|
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 From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne: a terrible fall, from a height of 160,000 miles, and no springs
to break it. According to the laws of gunnery, the projectile
must strike the earth with a speed equal to that with which it
left the mouth of the Columbiad, a speed of 16,000 yards in the
last second.
But to give some figures of comparison, it has been reckoned
that an object thrown from the top of the towers of Notre Dame,
the height of which is only 200 feet, will arrive on the
pavement at a speed of 240 miles per hour. Here the projectile
must strike the earth with a speed of 115,200 miles per hour.
"We are lost!" said Michel coolly.
From the Earth to the Moon |
