| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: contemplating expression of the unconscious who are going to die. The
two men stood looking down at her in silence.
"Has she been long ill?" asked the traveller.
"I have not slept for five nights," answered the Malay, in a
deliberate tone. "At first she heard voices calling her from the water
and struggled against me who held her. But since the sun of to-day
rose she hears nothing--she hears not me. She sees nothing. She sees
not me--me!"
He remained silent for a minute, then asked softly--
"Tuan, will she die?"
"I fear so," said the white man, sorrowfully. He had known Arsat years
Tales of Unrest |
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 On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: of organisms confined to any small spot, having conditions peculiar in only
a slight degree; for instance, small areas in the Old World could be
pointed out hotter than any in the New World, yet these are not inhabited
by a peculiar fauna or flora. Notwithstanding this parallelism in the
conditions of the Old and New Worlds, how widely different are their living
productions!
In the southern hemisphere, if we compare large tracts of land in
Australia, South Africa, and western South America, between latitudes 25
deg and 35 deg, we shall find parts extremely similar in all their
conditions, yet it would not be possible to point out three faunas and
floras more utterly dissimilar. Or again we may compare the productions of
On the Origin of Species |
