| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: strange snipe-bills (which they cannot open) and snake-like bodies;
small cuttlefish (Sepiolae) of a white jelly mottled with brilliant
metallic hues, with a ring of suckered arms round their tiny
parrots' beaks, who, put into a jar, will hover and dart in the
water, as the skylark does in air, by rapid winnowings of their
glassy side-fins, while they watch you with bright lizard-eyes; the
whole animal being a combination of the vertebrate and the mollusc,
so utterly fantastic and abnormal, that (had not the family been
amongst the commonest, from the earliest geological epochs) it
would have seemed, to man's deductive intellect, a form almost as
impossible as the mermaid, far more impossible than the sea-
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: future, quickly rejects them: thus early has he reached the conclusion
that there can be no science which is a 'science of nothing' (Parmen.).
(8) The conception of a science of good and evil also first occurs here, an
anticipation of the Philebus and Republic as well as of moral philosophy in
later ages.
The dramatic interest of the Dialogue chiefly centres in the youth
Charmides, with whom Socrates talks in the kindly spirit of an elder. His
childlike simplicity and ingenuousness are contrasted with the dialectical
and rhetorical arts of Critias, who is the grown-up man of the world,
having a tincture of philosophy. No hint is given, either here or in the
Timaeus, of the infamy which attaches to the name of the latter in Athenian
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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 United States Declaration of Independence: to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of
their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has
endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers,
the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare,
is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress
in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered
only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked
by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler
of a free People.
United States Declaration of Independence |
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 Confessio Amantis by John Gower: And bridlen hem now in now oute.
The kyng his yhe caste aboute,
Til he was ate laste war
And syh comende ayein his char 2040
Two pilegrins of so gret age,
That lich unto a dreie ymage
Thei weren pale and fade hewed,
And as a bussh which is besnewed,
Here berdes weren hore and whyte;
Ther was of kinde bot a lite,
That thei ne semen fulli dede.
Confessio Amantis |
