| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: they confirmed a higher sentiment of the mind, that there was order in the
universe. And so there began to be a real sympathy between the world
within and the world without. The numbers and figures which were present
to the mind's eye became visible to the eye of sense; the truth of nature
was mathematics; the other properties of objects seemed to reappear only in
the light of number. Law and morality also found a natural expression in
number and figure. Instruments of such power and elasticity could not fail
to be 'a most gracious assistance' to the first efforts of human
intelligence.
There was another reason why numbers had so great an influence over the
minds of early thinkers--they were verified by experience. Every use 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 The Jungle Tales of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: they went wild, and heavy jaws fell open in astonishment
and incredulity. For months they had lived in perpetual
terror of a weird, white demon whom but few had ever
glimpsed and lived to describe. Warriors had disappeared
from the paths almost within sight of the village and
from the midst of their companions as mysteriously and
completely as though they had been swallowed by the earth,
and later, at night, their dead bodies had fallen,
as from the heavens, into the village street.
This fearsome creature had appeared by night in the huts
of the village, killed, and disappeared, leaving behind
The Jungle Tales of Tarzan |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: they seem to have a mutual confidence in and friendship with one
another, as if they were all relations; nor did I observe the
sharping, tricking temper which is too much crept in among the
gaming and horse-racing gentry in some parts of England to be so
much known among them any otherwise than to be abhorred; and yet
they sometimes play, too, and make matches and horse-races, as they
see occasion.
The ladies here do not want the help of assemblies to assist in
matchmaking, or half-pay officers to run away with their daughters,
which the meetings called assemblies in some other parts of England
are recommended for. Here is no Bury Fair, where the women are
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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 Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: strength and brightness of imagination in the present 'speculation.'
He grapples with the notion that matter is made up of particles, not
in absolute contact, but surrounded by interatomic space. 'Space,'
he observes, 'must be taken as the only continuous part of a body so
constituted. Space will permeate all masses of matter in every
direction like a net, except that in place of meshes it will form
cells, isolating each atom from its neighbours, itself only being
continuous.'
Let us follow out this notion; consider, he argues, the case of a
non-conductor of electricity, such for example as shell-lac, with
its molecules, and intermolecular spaces running through the mass.
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