| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: the power of comparing them. The senses are not mere holes in a 'Trojan
horse,' but the organs of a presiding nature, in which they meet. A great
advance has been made in psychology when the senses are recognized as
organs of sense, and we are admitted to see or feel 'through them' and not
'by them,' a distinction of words which, as Socrates observes, is by no
means pedantic. A still further step has been made when the most abstract
notions, such as Being and Not-being, sameness and difference, unity and
plurality, are acknowledged to be the creations of the mind herself,
working upon the feelings or impressions of sense. In this manner Plato
describes the process of acquiring them, in the words 'Knowledge consists
not in the feelings or affections (pathemasi), but in the process of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from When the World Shook by H. Rider Haggard: That of Bastin was mildly interested, no more. Obviously, with
half his mind he was thinking of something else, probably of his
converts on the main island and of the school class fixed for
this hour which circumstances prevented him from attending.
Indeed, like Lot's wife he was casting glances behind him towards
the wicked place from which he had been forced to flee.
Neither the past nor the future had much real interest for
Bastin; any more than they had for Bickley, though for different
reasons. The former was done with; the latter he was quite
content to leave in other hands. If he had any clear idea
thereof, probably that undiscovered land appeared to him as a
When the World Shook |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter: more spiritual regions of the mind. The same tendency
may be traced in the Egyptian and Phrygian cults of that
period. It will be remembered how Juvenal (Sat. VI,
510-40) chaffs the priests of Cybele at Rome for making
themselves "eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake,"
or the rich Roman lady for plunging in the wintry Tiber
for a propitiation to Isis. No doubt among the later pagans
"the long intolerable tyranny of the senses over the soul"
had become a very serious matter. But Christianity represented
perhaps the most powerful reaction against this;
and this reaction had, as indicated in the last chapter, the
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
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 King of the Golden River by John Ruskin: peaks which were always covered with snow and from which a number of
torrents descended in constant cataracts. One of these fell
westward over the face of a crag so high that when the sun had set
to everything else, and all below was darkness, his beams still
shone full upon this waterfall, so that it looked like a shower of
gold. It was therefore called by the people of the neighborhood the
Golden River. It was strange that none of these streams fell into
the valley itself. They all descended on the other side of the
mountains and wound away through broad plains and by populous
cities. But the clouds were drawn so constantly to the snowy hills,
and rested so softly in the circular hollow, that in time of drought
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