| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: which appears in the Theaetetus, Philebus, Sophist, Politicus, Parmenides,
Timaeus. In the first stage of his philosophy Plato attributed Ideas to
all things, at any rate to all things which have classes or common notions:
these he supposed to exist only by participation in them. In the later
Dialogues he no longer included in them manufactured articles and ideas of
relation, but restricted them to 'types of nature,' and having become
convinced that the many cannot be parts of the one, for the idea of
participation in them he substituted imitation of them. To quote Dr.
Jackson's own expressions,--'whereas in the period of the Republic and the
Phaedo, it was proposed to pass through ontology to the sciences, in the
period of the Parmenides and the Philebus, it is proposed to pass through
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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: just by, with his fifty men. Upon the captain coming to me, I told
him my project for seizing the ship, which he liked wonderfully
well, and resolved to put it in execution the next morning. But,
in order to execute it with more art, and to be secure of success,
I told him we must divide the prisoners, and that he should go and
take Atkins, and two more of the worst of them, and send them
pinioned to the cave where the others lay. This was committed to
Friday and the two men who came on shore with the captain. They
conveyed them to the cave as to a prison: and it was, indeed, a
dismal place, especially to men in their condition. The others I
ordered to my bower, as I called it, of which I have given a full
Robinson Crusoe |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: noises like the howling of a dog in distress. Unconsciously, Etienne
found himself saying:--
"What does it want of me? It quivers and moans like a living creature.
My mother has often told me that the ocean was in horrible convulsions
on the night when I was born. Something is about to happen to me."
This thought kept him standing before his window with his eyes
sometimes on his mother's windows where a faint light trembled,
sometimes on the ocean which continued to moan. Suddenly Beauvouloir
knocked on the door of his room, opened it, and showed on his saddened
face the reflection of some new misfortune.
"Monseigneur," he said, "Madame la duchesse is in so sad a state that
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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 My Antonia by Willa Cather: of Dante's veneration for Virgil. Cleric went through canto
after canto of the `Commedia,' repeating the discourse between
Dante and his `sweet teacher,' while his cigarette burned itself
out unheeded between his long fingers. I can hear him now,
speaking the lines of the poet Statius, who spoke for Dante:
`I was famous on earth with the name which endures longest
and honours most. The seeds of my ardour were the sparks from
that divine flame whereby more than a thousand have kindled;
I speak of the "Aeneid," mother to me and nurse to me in poetry.'
Although I admired scholarship so much in Cleric, I was not
deceived about myself; I knew that I should never be a scholar.
My Antonia |
