| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: which are urged about the origin or existence of evil are mere dialectical
puzzles, standing in the same relation to Christian philosophy as the
puzzles of the Cynics and Megarians to the philosophy of Plato. They arise
out of the tendency of the human mind to regard good and evil both as
relative and absolute; just as the riddles about motion are to be explained
by the double conception of space or matter, which the human mind has the
power of regarding either as continuous or discrete.
In speaking of divine perfection, we mean to say that God is just and true
and loving, the author of order and not of disorder, of good and not of
evil. Or rather, that he is justice, that he is truth, that he is love,
that he is order, that he is the very progress of which we were speaking;
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Essays of Francis Bacon by Francis Bacon: soldiers; yea, and sometimes in their highest com-
mands. Nay, it seemeth at this instant they are
sensible, of this want of natives; as by the Prag-
matical Sanction, now published, appeareth.
It is certain that sedentary, and within-door
arts, and delicate manufactures (that require
rather the finger than the arm), have, in their na-
ture, a contrariety to a military disposition. And
generally, all warlike people are a little idle, and
love danger better than travail. Neither must they
be too much broken of it, if they shall be preserved
Essays of Francis Bacon |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: with more appalling skill than men.
One drop there was in all this bitter bucket, which must have tasted
sweet to John. He had resigned from the Custom House: Juno had got it
right this time, though she hadn't a notion of the real reason for John's
act. This act had been, since morning, lost for me, so to speak, in the
shuffle of more absorbing events; and it now rose to view again in my
mind as a telling stroke in the full-length portrait that all his acts
had been painting of the boy during the last twenty-four hours.
Notwithstanding a meddlesome aunt, and an arriving sweetheart, and
imminent wedlock, he hadn't forgotten to stop "taking orders from a
negro" at the very first opportunity which came to him; his phosphates
had done this for him, at least, and I should have the pleasure of
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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 Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: before passing into either, in other words, when it was in the veins; and
if attention be given, it will be found that this difference is very
marked only in the neighborhood of the heart; and is not so evident in
parts more remote from it. In the next place, the consistency of the coats
of which the arterial vein and the great artery are composed,
sufficiently shows that the blood is impelled against them with more
force than against the veins. And why should the left cavity of the heart
and the great artery be wider and larger than the right cavity and the
arterial vein, were it not that the blood of the venous artery, having
only been in the lungs after it has passed through the heart, is thinner,
and rarefies more readily, and in a higher degree, than the blood which
Reason Discourse |
