| 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: creed. Less originality, because, as I believe, one common Logos, Word,
Reason, reveals and unveils the same eternal truth to all who seek and
hunger for it.
Therefore we can, as the Christian philosophers of Alexandria did,
rejoice over every truth which their heathen adversaries beheld, and
attribute them, as Clement does, to the highest source, to the
inspiration of the one and universal Logos. With Clement, philosophy is
only hurtful when it is untrue to itself, and philosophy falsely so
called; true philosophy is an image of the truth, a divine gift bestowed
on the Greeks. The Bible, in his eyes, asserts that all forms of art
and wisdom are from God. The wise in mind have no doubt some peculiar
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: horrible and the most natural results of slavery. When I see the
order of nature overthrown, and when I hear the cry of humanity
in its vain struggle against the laws, my indignation does not
light upon the men of our own time who are the instruments of
these outrages; but I reserve my execration for those who, after
a thousand years of freedom, brought back slavery into the world
once more.
Whatever may be the efforts of the Americans of the South to
maintain slavery, they will not always succeed. Slavery, which
is now confined to a single tract of the civilized earth, which
is attacked by Christianity as unjust, and by political economy
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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 Gorgias by Plato: a bad tamer of animals who, having received them gentle, taught them to
kick and butt, and man is an animal; and Pericles who had the charge of man
only made him wilder, and more savage and unjust, and therefore he could
not have been a good statesman. The same tale might be repeated about
Cimon, Themistocles, Miltiades. But the charioteer who keeps his seat at
first is not thrown out when he gains greater experience and skill. The
inference is, that the statesman of a past age were no better than those of
our own. They may have been cleverer constructors of docks and harbours,
but they did not improve the character of the citizens. I have told you
again and again (and I purposely use the same images) that the soul, like
the body, may be treated in two ways--there is the meaner and the higher
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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 Walden by Henry David Thoreau: his furniture packed in a cart and going up country exposed to the
light of heaven and the eyes of men, a beggarly account of empty
boxes? That is Spaulding's furniture. I could never tell from
inspecting such a load whether it belonged to a so-called rich man
or a poor one; the owner always seemed poverty-stricken. Indeed,
the more you have of such things the poorer you are. Each load
looks as if it contained the contents of a dozen shanties; and if
one shanty is poor, this is a dozen times as poor. Pray, for what
do we move ever but to get rid of our furniture, our exuvioe: at
last to go from this world to another newly furnished, and leave
this to be burned? It is the same as if all these traps were
Walden |
