| 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: the difficulty?
By all means, he replied.
Does not what you have been saying, if true, amount to this: that there
must be a single science which is wholly a science of itself and of other
sciences, and that the same is also the science of the absence of science?
Yes.
But consider how monstrous this proposition is, my friend: in any parallel
case, the impossibility will be transparent to you.
How is that? and in what cases do you mean?
In such cases as this: Suppose that there is a kind of vision which is not
like ordinary vision, but a vision of itself and of other sorts of vision,
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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 One Basket by Edna Ferber: milkman's matutinal visit. The milkman came at six, and he was
the good fairy who released Ben Westerveld from durance vile--or
had until the winter months made his coming later and later, so
that he became worse than useless as a timepiece. But now it was
late March, and mild. The milkman's coming would soon again mark
old Ben's rising hour. Before he had begun to take it easy, six
o'clock had seen the entire mechanism of his busy little world
humming smoothly and sweetly, the whole set in motion by his own
big work-callused hands. Those hands puzzled him now. He often
looked at them curiously and in a detached sort of way, as if
they belonged to someone else. So white they were, and smooth
One Basket |
