| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Herland by Charlotte Gilman: Here was Mother Earth, bearing fruit. All that they ate was
fruit of motherhood, from seed or egg or their product. By motherhood
they were born and by motherhood they lived--life was, to them, just
the long cycle of motherhood.
But very early they recognized the need of improvement as well
as of mere repetition, and devoted their combined intelligence to
that problem--how to make the best kind of people. First this was
merely the hope of bearing better ones, and then they recognized
that however the children differed at birth, the real growth lay
later--through education.
Then things began to hum.
Herland |
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 Phaedo by Plato: death? (But compare Republic.)
There is no escape, Socrates, said Cebes; and to me your argument seems to
be absolutely true.
Yes, he said, Cebes, it is and must be so, in my opinion; and we have not
been deluded in making these admissions; but I am confident that there
truly is such a thing as living again, and that the living spring from the
dead, and that the souls of the dead are in existence, and that the good
souls have a better portion than the evil.
Cebes added: Your favorite doctrine, Socrates, that knowledge is simply
recollection, if true, also necessarily implies a previous time in which we
have learned that which we now recollect. But this would be impossible
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