| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: want you to argue with him.
That I may make a fool of myself?
No, indeed, he said; but I want you to put him down.
That is no easy matter, I replied; for he is a terrible fellow--a pupil of
Ctesippus. And there is Ctesippus himself: do you see him?
Never mind, Socrates, you shall argue with him.
Well, I suppose that I must, I replied.
Hereupon Ctesippus complained that we were talking in secret, and keeping
the feast to ourselves.
I shall be happy, I said, to let you have a share. Here is Lysis, who does
not understand something that I was saying, and wants me to ask Menexenus,
Lysis |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: at this day by Callicrates, one of his descendants.
Epaminondas being slain, there was a general peace again concluded,
from which Agesilaus's party excluded the Messenians, as men that
had no city, and therefore would not let them swear to the league;
to which when the rest of the Greeks admitted them, the
Lacedaemonians broke off, and continued the war alone, in hopes of
subduing the Messenians. In this Agesilaus was esteemed a stubborn
and headstrong man, and insatiable of war, who took such pains to
undermine the general peace, and to protract the war at a time when
he had not money to carry it on with, but was forced to borrow of
his friends and raise subscriptions, with much difficulty, while
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: know nothing. Even the realism of Cratylus is not based upon the ideas of
Plato, but upon the flux of Heracleitus. Here, as in the Sophist and
Politicus, Plato expressly draws attention to the want of agreement in
words and things. Hence we are led to infer, that the view of Socrates is
not the less Plato's own, because not based upon the ideas; 2nd, that
Plato's theory of language is not inconsistent with the rest of his
philosophy.
2. We do not deny that Socrates is partly in jest and partly in earnest.
He is discoursing in a high-flown vein, which may be compared to the
'dithyrambics of the Phaedrus.' They are mysteries of which he is
speaking, and he professes a kind of ludicrous fear of his imaginary
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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 A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: lurking, filled him with the breath of opposition. Laupepa seems
never to have been a popular king. Mataafa, on the other hand,
holds an unrivalled position in the eyes of his fellow-countrymen;
he was the hero of the war, he had lain with them in the bush, he
had borne the heat and burthen of the day; they began to claim that
he should enjoy more largely the fruits of victory; his exclusion
was believed to be a stroke of German vengeance, his elevation to
the kingship was looked for as the fitting crown and copestone of
the Samoan triumph; and but a little after the coming of the chief
justice, an ominous cry for Mataafa began to arise in the islands.
It is difficult to see what that official could have done but what
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