| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: not today, to- morrow, if not to-morrow, in thirty years, wasn't
it all the same! And what was this inevitable death--he did not
know, had never thought about it, and what was more, had not the
power, had not the courage to think about it.
"I work, I want to do something, but I had forgotten it must all
end; I had forgotten--death."
He sat on his bed in the darkness, crouched up, hugging his
knees, and holding his breath from the strain of thought, he
pondered. But the more intensely he thought, the clearer it
became to him that it was indubitably so, that in reality,
looking upon life, he had forgotten one little fact--that death
Anna Karenina |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: daughter's was genuine; he turned away, and presently came back. When
he next peeped through the hole in the curtain, Madame Crochard was in
bed. The young needlewoman, bending over her frame, was embroidering
with indefatigable diligence; on the table, with the writ lay a
triangular hunch of bread, placed there, no doubt, to sustain her in
the night and to remind her of the reward of her industry. The
stranger was tremulous with pity and sympathy; he threw his purse in
through a cracked pane so that it should fall at the girl's feet; and
then, without waiting to enjoy her surprise, he escaped, his cheeks
tingling.
Next morning the shy and melancholy stranger went past with a look of
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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 The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: minds to it. We went through it, wagon by wagon. One
wagon contains a wireless telegraphy station capable of
receiving news from such distant stations as those of
Carnarvon or Lyons. Another is fitted up as a newspaper
office, with a mechanical press capable of printing an edition
of fifteen thousand daily, so that the district served by the
train, however out of the way, gets its news simultaneously
with Moscow, many days sometimes before the belated Izvestia
or Pravda finds its way to them. And with its latest
news it gets its latest propaganda, and in order to get the
one it cannot help getting the other. Next door to that there
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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 Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: All things considered, is not this charming edifice an animal
fruit, a germ-casket, a capsule to be compared with that of the
plants? Only, the Epeira's wallet, instead of seeds, holds eggs.
The difference is more apparent than real, for egg and grain are
one.
How will this living fruit, ripening in the heat beloved of the
Cicadae, manage to burst? How, above all, will dissemination take
place? They are there in their hundreds. They must separate, go
far away, isolate themselves in a spot where there is not too much
fear of competition among neighbours. How will they set to work to
achieve this distant exodus, weaklings that they are, taking such
The Life of the Spider |
