| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: been here five years and had lots of promises, though I haven't got
anything else yet; but I expect it to come some day, so I keep my mouth
shut! If they asked me to sign a paper, that Mr. Over-the-Way"--he nodded
towards the bell tent--"never got drunk or didn't know how to swear, I'd
sign it, if there was a good dose of squaring to come after it. I could
stand a good lot of that sort of thing--squaring--if it would only come my
way."
The men laughed in a dreary sort of way, and the third man, who had not
spoken yet, rolled round on to his back, and took the pipe from his mouth.
"I tell you what," said the keen man, "those of us up here who have got a
bit of land and are trying honestly and fairly to work, are getting pretty
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Octopus by Frank Norris: Neither Hilma nor Annixter ever forgot their interview with Mrs.
Dyke that day. Suddenly waking, she had caught sight of
Annixter, and at once exclaimed eagerly:
"Is there any news?"
For a long time afterwards nothing could be got from her. She
was numb to all other issues than the one question of Dyke's
capture. She did not answer their questions nor reply to their
offers of assistance. Hilma and Annixter conferred together
without lowering their voices, at her very elbow, while she
looked vacantly at the floor, drawing one hand over the other in
a persistent, maniacal gesture. From time to time she would
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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 Theaetetus by Plato: organs of sense, and we are admitted to see or feel 'through them' and not
'by them,' a distinction of words which, as Socrates observes, is by no
means pedantic. A still further step has been made when the most abstract
notions, such as Being and Not-being, sameness and difference, unity and
plurality, are acknowledged to be the creations of the mind herself,
working upon the feelings or impressions of sense. In this manner Plato
describes the process of acquiring them, in the words 'Knowledge consists
not in the feelings or affections (pathemasi), but in the process of
reasoning about them (sullogismo).' Here, is in the Parmenides, he means
something not really different from generalization. As in the Sophist, he
is laying the foundation of a rational psychology, which is to supersede
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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 Meno by Plato: have been better left to die out. It certainly could not be refuted by a
philosophy such as Kant's, in which, no less than in the previously
mentioned systems, the history of the human mind and the nature of language
are almost wholly ignored, and the certainty of objective knowledge is
transferred to the subject; while absolute truth is reduced to a figment,
more abstract and narrow than Plato's ideas, of 'thing in itself,' to
which, if we reason strictly, no predicate can be applied.
The question which Plato has raised respecting the origin and nature of
ideas belongs to the infancy of philosophy; in modern times it would no
longer be asked. Their origin is only their history, so far as we know it;
there can be no other. We may trace them in language, in philosophy, in
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