| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: fossil state. As we here and there see a thin straggling branch springing
from a fork low down in a tree, and which by some chance has been favoured
and is still alive on its summit, so we occasionally see an animal like the
Ornithorhynchus or Lepidosiren, which in some small degree connects by its
affinities two large branches of life, and which has apparently been saved
from fatal competition by having inhabited a protected station. As buds
give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and
overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it
has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken
branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever
branching and beautiful ramifications.
On the Origin of Species |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Legend of Montrose by Walter Scott: such expressions necessarily inferred the establishment of
Presbytery; nor were they undeceived, until, when their help was
no longer needful, the sectaries gave them to understand, that
the phrase might be as well applied to Independency, or any other
mode of worship, which those who were at the head of affairs at
the time might consider as agreeable "to the word of God, and the
practice of the reformed churches." Neither were the outwitted
Scottish less astonished to find, that the designs of the English
sectaries struck against the monarchial constitution of Britain,
it having been their intention to reduce the power of the King,
but by no means to abrogate the office. They fared, however, in
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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 Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: expression of contentment, or general grace during meat. Every now
and again a big peacock would separate himself from the mob and take
a stately turn or two about the lawn, or perhaps mount for a moment
upon the rail, and there shrilly publish to the world his
satisfaction with himself and what he had to eat. It happened, for
my sins, that none of these admirable birds had anything beyond the
merest rudiment of a tail. Tails, it seemed, were out of season just
then. But they had their necks for all that; and by their necks
alone they do as much surpass all the other birds of our grey climate
as they fall in quality of song below the blackbird or the lark.
Surely the peacock, with its incomparable parade of glorious colour
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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 Laches by Plato: words, true knowledge is not that of the soothsayer but of the philosopher.
And all knowledge will thus be equivalent to all virtue--a position which
elsewhere Socrates is not unwilling to admit, but which will not assist us
in distinguishing the nature of courage. In this part of the Dialogue the
contrast between the mode of cross-examination which is practised by Laches
and by Socrates, and also the manner in which the definition of Laches is
made to approximate to that of Nicias, are worthy of attention.
Thus, with some intimation of the connexion and unity of virtue and
knowledge, we arrive at no distinct result. The two aspects of courage are
never harmonized. The knowledge which in the Protagoras is explained as
the faculty of estimating pleasures and pains is here lost in an unmeaning
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