| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: because it has firm hold of the one eternal root-idea which gives life,
meaning, Divine sanction, to every germ or fragment of human truth which
is in any of them. It did so, at least, in Alexandria for the Greek
literature. About the Christian era, a cultivated Alexandrian Jew, a
disciple of Plato and of Aristotle, did seem to himself to find in the
sacred books of his nation that which agreed with the deepest
discoveries of Greek philosophy; which explained and corroborated them.
And his announcement of this fact, weak and defective as it was, had the
most enormous and unexpected results. The father of New Platonism was
Philo the Jew.
LECTURE III--NEOPLATONISM
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas: pure republicanism. These men were the two sole political
representatives of that revolution in which Charles I. had
first lost his crown, and afterwards his head. As regarded
Lambert, he did not dissemble his views; he sought to
establish a military government, and to be himself the head
of that government.
Monk, a rigid republican, some said, wished to maintain the
Rump Parliament, that visible though degenerated
representative of the republic. Monk, artful and ambitious,
said others, wished simply to make of this parliament, which
he affected to protect, a solid step by which to mount the
Ten Years Later |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad: of a jutting wharf. We were blind with fatigue. My
men dropped the oars and fell off the thwarts as if dead.
I made fast to a pile. A current rippled softly. The
scented obscurity of the shore was grouped into vast
masses, a density of colossal clumps of vegetation, prob-
ably--mute and fantastic shapes. And at their foot the
semicircle of a beach gleamed faintly, like an illusion.
There was not a light, not a stir, not a sound. The mys-
terious East faced me, perfumed like a flower, silent like
death, dark like a grave.
"And I sat weary beyond expression, exulting like a
Youth |
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 Tik-Tok of Oz by L. Frank Baum: strangers, ugly as I am."
Shaggy Man turned to the group surrounding him.
"What shall I do?" he asked in sorrowful tones.
"I cannot leave my dear brother here, and he
refuses to come out of that house and face us.
"I'll tell you," replied Betsy. "Let him put on
a mask."
"The very idea I was seeking!" exclaimed Shaggy
joyfully; and then he called out: "Brother, put a
mask over your face, and then none of us can see
what your features are like."
Tik-Tok of Oz |
