| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Aesop's Fables by Aesop: gave him a sound cudgelling for the fright he had caused. And
shortly afterwards a Fox came up to him and said: "Ah, I knew you
by your voice."
Fine clothes may disguise, but
silly words will disclose a fool.
The Two Fellows and the Bear
Two Fellows were travelling together through a wood, when a
Bear rushed out upon them. One of the travellers happened to be
in front, and he seized hold of the branch of a tree, and hid
himself among the leaves. The other, seeing no help for it, threw
himself flat down upon the ground, with his face in the dust. The
Aesop's Fables |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: Some characteristic differences may here be noted, which distinguish the
ancient from the modern mode of conceiving God.
a. To Plato, the idea of God or mind is both personal and impersonal. Nor
in ascribing, as appears to us, both these attributes to him, and in
speaking of God both in the masculine and neuter gender, did he seem to
himself inconsistent. For the difference between the personal and
impersonal was not marked to him as to ourselves. We make a fundamental
distinction between a thing and a person, while to Plato, by the help of
various intermediate abstractions, such as end, good, cause, they appear
almost to meet in one, or to be two aspects of the same. Hence, without
any reconciliation or even remark, in the Republic he speaks at one time of
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey: to his knees; again he was hard put to it to dodge a rolling
boulder, there were times when he could not see Wrangle for dust,
and once he and the horse rode a sliding shelf of yellow,
weathered cliff. It was a trail on which there could be no stops,
and, therefore, if perilous, it was at least one that did not
take long in the descent.
Venters breathed lighter when that was over, and felt a sudden
assurance in the success of his enterprise. For at first it had
been a reckless determination to achieve something at any cost,
and now it resolved itself into an adventure worthy of all his
reason and cunning, and keenness of eye and ear.
Riders of the Purple Sage |
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 Sophist by Plato: contradiction. For what is asserted about Being and Not-Being only relates
to our most abstract notions, and in no way interferes with the principle
of contradiction employed in the concrete. Because Not-being is identified
with Other, or Being with Not-being, this does not make the proposition
'Some have not eaten' any the less a contradiction of 'All have eaten.'
The explanation of the negative given by Plato in the Sophist is a true but
partial one; for the word 'not,' besides the meaning of 'other,' may also
imply 'opposition.' And difference or opposition may be either total or
partial: the not-beautiful may be other than the beautiful, or in no
relation to the beautiful, or a specific class in various degrees opposed
to the beautiful. And the negative may be a negation of fact or of thought
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