| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: an object and its relation to other objects. But we are already passing
beyond the limits of our actual knowledge on a subject which has given rise
to many conjectures. More important than the addition of another
conjecture is the observation, whether in the case of sight or of any other
sense, of the great complexity of the causes and the great simplicity of
the effect.
The sympathy of the mind and the ear is no less striking than the sympathy
of the mind and the eye. Do we not seem to perceive instinctively and as
an act of sense the differences of articulate speech and of musical notes?
Yet how small a part of speech or of music is produced by the impression of
the ear compared with that which is furnished by the mind!
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: hourly apprehensions I had of being made the food of other
creatures. But all the while the mate was thus relating to me the
miserable condition of the ship's company, I could not put out of
my thought the story he had told me of the three poor creatures in
the great cabin, viz. the mother, her son, and the maid-servant,
whom he had heard nothing of for two or three days, and whom, he
seemed to confess, they had wholly neglected, their own extremities
being so great; by which I understood that they had really given
them no food at all, and that therefore they must be perished, and
be all lying dead, perhaps, on the floor or deck of the cabin.
As I therefore kept the mate, whom we then called captain, on board
Robinson Crusoe |
