The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: what Dr. Jackson distinguishes as the first class of dialogues from the
second equally assert or imply that the relation of things to the Ideas, is
one of participation in them as well as of imitation of them (Prof.
Zeller's summary of his own review of Dr. Jackson, Archiv fur Geschichte
der Philosophie.)
In conclusion I may remark that in Plato's writings there is both unity,
and also growth and development; but that we must not intrude upon him
either a system or a technical language.
Balliol College,
October, 1891.
NOTE
|
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 Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: determined to return to Fouzilhic, and ask a guide a little farther
on my way - 'a little farther lend thy guiding hand.'
The thing was easy to decide, hard to accomplish. In this sensible
roaring blackness I was sure of nothing but the direction of the
wind. To this I set my face; the road had disappeared, and I went
across country, now in marshy opens, now baffled by walls
unscalable to Modestine, until I came once more in sight of some
red windows. This time they were differently disposed. It was not
Fouzilhic, but Fouzilhac, a hamlet little distant from the other in
space, but worlds away in the spirit of its inhabitants. I tied
Modestine to a gate, and groped forward, stumbling among rocks,
|