| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: or small in objects, but greatness and smallness will be relative only to
each other; therefore the others cannot be greater or less than the one;
also the one can neither exceed nor be exceeded by the others, and they are
therefore equal to one another. And this will be true also of the one in
relation to itself: one will be equal to itself as well as to the others
(talla). Yet one, being in itself, must also be about itself, containing
and contained, and is therefore greater and less than itself. Further,
there is nothing beside the one and the others; and as these must be in
something, they must therefore be in one another; and as that in which a
thing is is greater than the thing, the inference is that they are both
greater and less than one another, because containing and contained in one
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock: and the greenwoods from the matins of the lark to the vespers
of the nightingale, and administering natural justice according
to Robin's ideas of rectifying the inequalities of human condition:
raising genial dews from the bags of the rich and idle, and returning
them in fertilising showers on the poor and industrious:
an operation which more enlightened statesmen have happily reversed,
to the unspeakable benefit of the community at large.
The light footsteps of Marian were impressed on the morning dew beside
the firmer step of her lover, and they shook its large drops about them
as they cleared themselves a passage through the thick tall fern,
without any fear of catching cold, which was not much in fashion
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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 Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: sponged the sweat of fevers from his brow, and stole food for him, and
the weaker, a child perhaps, who had been picked up on the roadside,
and had then become a Mercenary, repaid this devotion by a thousand
kindnesses.
They exchanged their necklaces and earrings, presents which they had
made to one another in former days, after great peril, or in hours of
intoxication. All asked to die, and none would strike. A young fellow
might be seen here and there, saying to another whose beard was grey:
"No! no! you are more robust! you will avenge us, kill me!" and the
man would reply: "I have fewer years to live! Strike to the heart, and
think no more about it!" Brothers gazed on one another with clasped
Salammbo |
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 Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: Alexandria. After them Almansoor, Hairoun Alraschid, and their
successors, who patronised the Nestorian Christians, obtained from them
translations of the philosophic, medical, and astronomical Greek works;
while the last of the Omniades, Abdalrahman, had introduced the same
literary taste into Spain, where, in the thirteenth century, Averroes
and Maimonides rivalled the fame of Avicenna, who had flourished at
Bagdad a century before.
But, as I have said already, these Arabs seem to have invented nothing;
they only commented. And yet not only commented; for they preserved for
us those works of whose real value they were so little aware. Averroes,
in quality of commentator on Aristotle, became his rival in the minds of
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