| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: in some distant Southern port, where my liberty is
endangered, or until I am bent solely on building up an
estate at home by peaceful enterprise, I can afford to
refuse allegiance to Massachusetts, and her right to my
property and life. It costs me less in every sense to incur
the penalty of disobedience to the State than it would to obey.
I should feel as if I were worth less in that case.
Some years ago, the State met me in behalf of the
Church, and commanded me to pay a certain sum toward the
support of a clergyman whose preaching my father attended,
but never I myself. "Pay," it said, "or be locked up in the
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
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 Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: [8] For the institution called the {dokimasia}, see Aristot.
"Constitution of Athens," ch. lv.
[9] See Dem. "against Midias," 565, 17; "against Apholus" (1), 814,
20.
[10] See Lys. "Or." xiv. and xv.
[11] See Grote, "H. G." vi. p. 48; Thuc. vii. 78; i. 96; Arist.
"Wasps," 707; Aristot. "Pol." v. 8.
I put it to you, then: can any one suppose that all, or any, of these
may dispense with adjudication?[12] If so, will any one say which
ought, and which ought not, to be adjudicated on, there and then? If,
on the other hand, we are forced to admit that these are all fair
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