| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Crito by Plato: SOCRATES: Let us consider the matter together, and do you either refute me
if you can, and I will be convinced; or else cease, my dear friend, from
repeating to me that I ought to escape against the wishes of the Athenians:
for I highly value your attempts to persuade me to do so, but I may not be
persuaded against my own better judgment. And now please to consider my
first position, and try how you can best answer me.
CRITO: I will.
SOCRATES: Are we to say that we are never intentionally to do wrong, or
that in one way we ought and in another way we ought not to do wrong, or is
doing wrong always evil and dishonorable, as I was just now saying, and as
has been already acknowledged by us? Are all our former admissions which
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs: at it grazed my head, and at the same instant my shaft
pierced the Sagoth's savage heart, and with a single groan
he lunged almost at my feet--stone dead. Close behind
him were two more--fifty yards perhaps--but the distance
gave me time to snatch up the dead guardsman's shield,
for the close call his hatchet had just given me had borne
in upon me the urgent need I had for one. Those which I
had purloined at Phutra we had not been able to bring along
because their size precluded our concealing them within
the skins of the Mahars which had brought us safely from
the city.
At the Earth's Core |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: falsehood with negation. Nor is he quite consistent in regarding Not-being
as one class of Being, and yet as coextensive with Being in general.
Before analyzing further the topics thus suggested, we will endeavour to
trace the manner in which Plato arrived at his conception of Not-being.
In all the later dialogues of Plato, the idea of mind or intelligence
becomes more and more prominent. That idea which Anaxagoras employed
inconsistently in the construction of the world, Plato, in the Philebus,
the Sophist, and the Laws, extends to all things, attributing to Providence
a care, infinitesimal as well as infinite, of all creation. The divine
mind is the leading religious thought of the later works of Plato. The
human mind is a sort of reflection of this, having ideas of Being,
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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 Persuasion by Jane Austen: Do not you hear your aunt speak? Come to me, Walter, come to
cousin Charles."
But not a bit did Walter stir.
In another moment, however, she found herself in the state of
being released from him; some one was taking him from her,
though he had bent down her head so much, that his little sturdy hands
were unfastened from around her neck, and he was resolutely borne away,
before she knew that Captain Wentworth had done it.
Her sensations on the discovery made her perfectly speechless.
She could not even thank him. She could only hang over little Charles,
with most disordered feelings. His kindness in stepping forward
Persuasion |
