| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: cannot always be given in words. A person may have some skill or latent
experience which he is able to use himself and is yet unable to teach
others, because he has no principles, and is incapable of collecting or
arranging his ideas. He has practice, but not theory; art, but not
science. This is a true fact of psychology, which is recognized by Plato
in this passage. But he is far from saying, as some have imagined, that
inspiration or divine grace is to be regarded as higher than knowledge. He
would not have preferred the poet or man of action to the philosopher, or
the virtue of custom to the virtue based upon ideas.
Also here, as in the Ion and Phaedrus, Plato appears to acknowledge an
unreasoning element in the higher nature of man. The philosopher only has
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lady Susan by Jane Austen: convinced to the contrary. She speaks of her with so much tenderness and
anxiety, lamenting so bitterly the neglect of her education, which she
represents however as wholly unavoidable, that I am forced to recollect how
many successive springs her ladyship spent in town, while her daughter was
left in Staffordshire to the care of servants, or a governess very little
better, to prevent my believing what she says.
If her manners have so great an influence on my resentful heart, you may
judge how much more strongly they operate on Mr. Vernon's generous temper.
I wish I could be as well satisfied as he is, that it was really her choice
to leave Langford for Churchhill; and if she had not stayed there for
months before she discovered that her friend's manner of living did not
Lady Susan |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Iliad by Homer: well skilled in all the arts of war. These, when they grew up,
went to Ilius with the Argive fleet in the cause of Menelaus and
Agamemnon sons of Atreus, and there they both of them fell. As
two lions whom their dam has reared in the depths of some
mountain forest to plunder homesteads and carry off sheep and
cattle till they get killed by the hand of man, so were these two
vanquished by Aeneas, and fell like high pine-trees to the
ground.
Brave Menelaus pitied them in their fall, and made his way to the
front, clad in gleaming bronze and brandishing his spear, for
Mars egged him on to do so with intent that he should be killed
The Iliad |
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 The Symposium by Xenophon: separated from them, may forget to behave as brave men should. But the
men of Lacedaemon, holding that "if a man but lay his hand upon the
body and for lustful purpose, he shall thereby forfeit claim to what
is beautiful and noble"--do, in the spirit of their creed, contrive to
mould and fashion their "beloved ones" to such height of virtue,[71]
that should these find themselves drawn up with foreigners, albeit no
longer side by side with their own lovers,[72] conscience will make
desertion of their present friends impossible. Self-respect constrains
them: since the goddess whom the men of Lacedaemon worship is not
"Shamelessness," but "Reverence."[73]
[64] See Cobet, "Pros. Xen." p. 15; Plat. "Protag." 315 D; Ael. "V.
The Symposium |
