| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: while we forget that paths were made that men might walk in them, and
not stand still, and try in vain to stop the way.
It may be said, certainly, as an excuse for these Alexandrian Greeks,
that they were a people in a state of old age and decay; and that they
only exhibited the common and natural faults of old age. For as with
individuals, so with races, nations, societies, schools of thought--
youth is the time of free fancy and poetry; manhood of calm and strong
induction; old age of deduction, when men settle down upon their lees,
and content themselves with reaffirming and verifying the conclusions of
their earlier years, and too often, alas! with denying and
anathematising all conclusions which have been arrived at since their
|
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 War and the Future by H. G. Wells: When they pressed me further, I said: "I am really the
questioner. I am visiting /your/ country, and you have to
tell /me/ things. It is not right that I should do all the
telling. Tell me all about Romain Rolland."
And so I pressed them about the official socialists in Italy and
the Socialist minority in France until I got the question out of
the net of national comparisons and upon a broader footing. In
several conversations we began to work out in general terms the
psychology of those people who were against the war. But usually
we could not get to that; my interlocutors would insist upon
telling me just what they would like to do or just what they
|
