| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: and mysterious as any romance by Lady (Mrs.) Radcliffe. I am apt to
attend to my presentiments, and I am off to-morrow. Murat will not
refuse me leave, for, thanks to our varied services, we always have
influential friends.'
" 'Since you mean to cut your stick, tell us what's up,' said an old
Republican colonel, who cared not a rap for Imperial gentility and
choice language.
"The surgeon-major looked about him cautiously, as if to make sure who
were his audience, and being satisfied that no Spaniard was within
hearing, he said:
" 'We are none but Frenchmen--then, with pleasure, Colonel Hulot.
The Muse of the Department |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: mental operations. There are two principal kinds of it, recollection and
recognition,--recollection in which forgotten things are recalled or return
to the mind, recognition in which the mind finds itself again among things
once familiar. The simplest way in which we can represent the former to
ourselves is by shutting our eyes and trying to recall in what we term the
mind's eye the picture of the surrounding scene, or by laying down the book
which we are reading and recapitulating what we can remember of it. But
many times more powerful than recollection is recognition, perhaps because
it is more assisted by association. We have known and forgotten, and after
a long interval the thing which we have seen once is seen again by us, but
with a different feeling, and comes back to us, not as new knowledge, but
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Rig Veda: 11 Thrice, Agni, let thy noose surround the demon who with
his
falsehood injures Holy Order.
Loud roaring with thy flame, O Jatavedas, crush him and cast
him down
before the singer.
12 Lead thou the worshipper that eye, O Agni, wherewith thou
lookest
on the hoof-armed demon.
With light celestial in Atharvan's manner burn up the foot
who ruins
The Rig Veda |
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 Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot: or quietism still prevails.
My fear is that, with the best intentions, this policy has been
carried so far as to react injuriously on the Male Sex.
For the consequence is that, as things now are, we Males have to lead
a kind of bi-lingual, and I may almost say bi-mental, existence.
With Women, we speak of "love", "duty", "right", "wrong", "pity",
"hope", and other irrational and emotional conceptions,
which have no existence, and the fiction of which has no object
except to control feminine exuberances; but among ourselves,
and in our books, we have an entirely different vocabulary
and I may almost say, idiom. "Love" then becomes "the anticipation
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions |
