| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: likeness to the original.
Yes, he said, that sort of thing is certainly very blameable; but what are
the stories which you mean?
First of all, I said, there was that greatest of all lies in high places,
which the poet told about Uranus, and which was a bad lie too,--I mean what
Hesiod says that Uranus did, and how Cronus retaliated on him. The doings
of Cronus, and the sufferings which in turn his son inflicted upon him,
even if they were true, ought certainly not to be lightly told to young and
thoughtless persons; if possible, they had better be buried in silence.
But if there is an absolute necessity for their mention, a chosen few might
hear them in a mystery, and they should sacrifice not a common (Eleusinian)
The Republic |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: colored by the fire of the tropics drooping from haughty heads; pearls
twined in braided hair; shot or ribbed or brocaded silks, as though
the genius of arabesque had presided over French manufactures,--all
this luxury was in harmony with the beauties collected there as if to
realize a "Keepsake." The eye received there an impression of the
whitest shoulders, some amber-tinted, others so polished as to seem
colandered, some dewy, some plump and satiny, as though Rubens had
prepared their flesh; in short, all shades known to man in white. Here
were eyes sparkling like onyx or turquoise fringed with dark lashes;
faces of varied outline presenting the most graceful types of many
lands; foreheads noble and majestic, or softly rounded, as if thought
|
| 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: similar to the first than to the second stage. The second
stage of human psychologic evolution is an aberration,
a divorce, a parenthesis. With its culmination and dismissal
the mind passes back into the simple state of union
with the Whole. (The state of Ekagrata in the Hindu philosophy:
one-pointedness, singleness of mind.) And the consciousness
of the Whole, and of things past and things to
come and things far around--which consciousness had
been shut out by the concentration on the local self--begins
to return again. This is not to say, of course, that the
excursus in the second stage has been a loss and a defect.
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 Lesser Hippias by Plato: arithmetician?
HIPPIAS: Yes, Socrates, assuredly I am.
SOCRATES: And if some one were to ask you what is the sum of 3 multiplied
by 700, you would tell him the true answer in a moment, if you pleased?
HIPPIAS: certainly I should.
SOCRATES: Is not that because you are the wisest and ablest of men in
these matters?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And being as you are the wisest and ablest of men in these
matters of calculation, are you not also the best?
HIPPIAS: To be sure, Socrates, I am the best.
|
