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: speech are possible, for to think or to say what is not--is falsehood,
which thus arises in the region of thought and in speech.
THEAETETUS: That is quite true.
STRANGER: And where there is falsehood surely there must be deceit.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And if there is deceit, then all things must be full of idols
and images and fancies.
THEAETETUS: To be sure.
STRANGER: Into that region the Sophist, as we said, made his escape, and,
when he had got there, denied the very possibility of falsehood; no one, he
argued, either conceived or uttered falsehood, inasmuch as not-being did
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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 From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne: earth is nearest the sun she is in her perihelion; and in her
aphelion at the farthest point. Speaking of the moon, she is
nearest to the earth in her perigee, and farthest from it in
her apogee. To use analogous expressions, with which the
astronomers' language is enriched, if the projectile remains
as a satellite of the moon, we must say that it is in its
"aposelene" at its farthest point, and in its "periselene" at
its nearest. In the latter case, the projectile would attain
its maximum of speed; and in the former its minimum. It was
evidently moving toward its aposelenitical point; and Barbicane
had reason to think that its speed would decrease up to this
 From the Earth to the Moon |