| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: consideration. The various uses of the word 'mixed,' for the mixed life,
the mixed class of elements, the mixture of pleasures, or of pleasure and
pain, are a further source of perplexity. Our ignorance of the opinions
which Plato is attacking is also an element of obscurity. Many things in a
controversy might seem relevant, if we knew to what they were intended to
refer. But no conjecture will enable us to supply what Plato has not told
us; or to explain, from our fragmentary knowledge of them, the relation in
which his doctrine stood to the Eleatic Being or the Megarian good, or to
the theories of Aristippus or Antisthenes respecting pleasure. Nor are we
able to say how far Plato in the Philebus conceives the finite and infinite
(which occur both in the fragments of Philolaus and in the Pythagorean
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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 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: Socialist demands, of hurling the traditional anathemas against
liberalism, against representative government, against bourgeois
competition, bourgeois freedom of the press, bourgeois
legislation, bourgeois liberty and equality, and of preaching to
the masses that they had nothing to gain, and everything to lose,
by this bourgeois movement. German Socialism forgot, in the nick
of time, that the French criticism, whose silly echo it was,
presupposed the existence of modern bourgeois society, with its
corresponding economic conditions of existence, and the political
constitution adapted thereto, the very things whose attainment
was the object of the pending struggle in Germany.
The Communist Manifesto |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: his stomach, made him shut his eyes tight (though that was no great
loss, for he could not see at best a yard before his nose); and
when he got through the rhododendrons, the hassock-grass and sedges
tumbled him over, and cut his poor little fingers afterwards most
spitefully; the birches birched him as soundly as if he had been a
nobleman at Eton, and over the face too (which is not fair swishing
as all brave boys will agree); and the lawyers tripped him up, and
tore his shins as if they had sharks' teeth - which lawyers are
likely enough to have.
"I must get out of this," thought Tom, "or I shall stay here till
somebody comes to help me - which is just what I don't want."
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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 Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: sure of his new friends, for he judged they were too civil to be
wholesome, and since he had grown better acquainted with his
father-in-law the man had grown more cautious. So he told them
nothing of himself, but only his name and descent, and that he came
from the Eight Islands, and what fine islands they were; and about
the king's palace in Honolulu, and how he was a chief friend of the
king and the missionaries. But he put many questions and learned
much. The island where he was was called the Isle of Voices; it
belonged to the tribe, but they made their home upon another, three
hours' sail to the southward. There they lived and had their
permanent houses, and it was a rich island, where were eggs and
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