| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, etc. by Oscar Wilde: the playing fields at Eton has been quite as useful to me as
anything I was taught at Cambridge. I should tell you that Cyril's
father and mother were both dead. They had been drowned in a
horrible yachting accident off the Isle of Wight. His father had
been in the diplomatic service, and had married a daughter, the
only daughter, in fact, of old Lord Crediton, who became Cyril's
guardian after the death of his parents. I don't think that Lord
Crediton cared very much for Cyril. He had never really forgiven
his daughter for marrying a man who had not a title. He was an
extraordinary old aristocrat, who swore like a costermonger, and
had the manners of a farmer. I remember seeing him once on Speech-
|
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 Charmides by Plato: itself, how does the knowledge of what we know imply the knowledge of what
we do not know? Besides, knowledge is an abstraction only, and will not
inform us of any particular subject, such as medicine, building, and the
like. It may tell us that we or other men know something, but can never
tell us what we know.
Admitting that there is a knowledge of what we know and of what we do not
know, which would supply a rule and measure of all things, still there
would be no good in this; and the knowledge which temperance gives must be
of a kind which will do us good; for temperance is a good. But this
universal knowledge does not tend to our happiness and good: the only kind
of knowledge which brings happiness is the knowledge of good and evil. To
|
