| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: is consistent with his own profession of ignorance. Hence his ridicule of
the new school of etymology is interspersed with many declarations 'that he
knows nothing,' 'that he has learned from Euthyphro,' and the like. Even
the truest things which he says are depreciated by himself. He professes
to be guessing, but the guesses of Plato are better than all the other
theories of the ancients respecting language put together.
The dialogue hardly derives any light from Plato's other writings, and
still less from Scholiasts and Neoplatonist writers. Socrates must be
interpreted from himself, and on first reading we certainly have a
difficulty in understanding his drift, or his relation to the two other
interlocutors in the dialogue. Does he agree with Cratylus or with
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: recollection of the knowledge which she attained when in the company of the
Gods. And men in general recall only with difficulty the things of another
world, but the mind of the philosopher has a better remembrance of them.
For when he beholds the visible beauty of earth his enraptured soul passes
in thought to those glorious sights of justice and wisdom and temperance
and truth which she once gazed upon in heaven. Then she celebrated holy
mysteries and beheld blessed apparitions shining in pure light, herself
pure, and not as yet entombed in the body. And still, like a bird eager to
quit its cage, she flutters and looks upwards, and is therefore deemed mad.
Such a recollection of past days she receives through sight, the keenest of
our senses, because beauty, alone of the ideas, has any representation on
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence: her thighs, then drew down her skirts, buttoning his own clothes
unthinking, not even turning aside, in the faint, faint light from the
lantern.
'Tha mun come ter th' cottage one time,' he said, looking down at her
with a warm, sure, easy face.
But she lay there inert, and was gazing up at him thinking: Stranger!
Stranger! She even resented him a little.
He put on his coat and looked for his hat, which had fallen, then he
slung on his gun.
'Come then!' he said, looking down at her with those warm, peaceful
sort of eyes.
Lady Chatterley's Lover |
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 Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: least, the indispensable cruse of oil for anointing after the
bath, to which both Jews, Greeks, and Romans owed so much health
and beauty. And then we read in the simple verse of a poet too
refined, like the rest of his race, to see anything mean or
ridiculous in that which was not ugly and unnatural, how she and
her maids got into the "polished waggon," "with good wheels," and
she "took the whip and the studded reins," and "beat them till
they started;" and how the mules, "rattled" away, and "pulled
against each other," till
When they came to the fair flowing river
Which feeds good lavatories all the year,
|
