Today's Stichomancy for Karl Marx
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mountains by Stewart Edward White: He camped near us during three days. I never
saw a more modest, self-effacing man. He seemed
genuinely, childishly, almost helplessly interested in
our fly-fishing, shooting, our bear-skins, and our
travels. You would have thought from his demeanor
--which was sincere and not in the least ironical--
that he had never seen or heard anything quite like
that before, and was struck with wonder at it. Yet
he had cast flies before we were born, and shot even
earlier than he had cast a fly, and was a very
Ishmael for travel. Rarely could you get an account 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 Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: for escape.
I told him their case and mine differed exceedingly; that they were
cast upon the shore without necessaries, without supply of food, or
present sustenance till they could provide for it; that, it was
true, I had this further disadvantage and discomfort, that I was
alone; but then the supplies I had providentially thrown into my
hands, by the unexpected driving of the ship on the shore, was such
a help as would have encouraged any creature in the world to have
applied himself as I had done. "Seignior," says the Spaniard, "had
we poor Spaniards been in your case, we should never have got half
those things out of the ship, as you did: nay," says he, "we
 Robinson Crusoe |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: higher form or ideal of friendship exists only for the sake of the good.
That friends are not necessarily either like or unlike, is also a truth
confirmed by experience. But the use of the terms 'like' or 'good' is too
strictly limited; Socrates has allowed himself to be carried away by a sort
of eristic or illogical logic against which no definition of friendship
would be able to stand. In the course of the argument he makes a
distinction between property and accident which is a real contribution to
the science of logic. Some higher truths appear through the mist. The
manner in which the field of argument is widened, as in the Charmides and
Laches by the introduction of the idea of knowledge, so here by the
introduction of the good, is deserving of attention. The sense of the
 Lysis |
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 Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger: In the more recent past the effort has been made to control,
civilize, and sublimate the great primordial natural force of sex,
mainly by futile efforts at prohibition, suppression, restraint, and
extirpation. Its revenge, as the psychoanalysts are showing us every
day, has been great. Insanity, hysteria, neuroses, morbid fears and
compulsions, weaken and render useless and unhappy thousands of humans
who are unconscious victims of the attempt to pit individual powers
against this great natural force. In the solution of the problem of
sex, we should bear in mind what the successful method of humanity has
been in its conquest, or rather its control of the great physical and
chemical forces of the external world. Like all other energy, that of
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