| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Anabasis by Xenophon: years before having to move once more, to settle
in Corinth. He died in 354 B.C.
The Anabasis is his story of the march to Persia
to aid Cyrus, who enlisted Greek help to try and
take the throne from Artaxerxes, and the ensuing
return of the Greeks, in which Xenophon played a
leading role. This occurred between 401 B.C. and
March 399 B.C.
PREPARER'S NOTE
This was typed from Dakyns' series, "The Works of Xenophon," a
four-volume set. The complete list of Xenophon's works (though
Anabasis |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Amazing Interlude by Mary Roberts Rinehart: possess, it began to sing:
Trou la la, ca ne va guere;
Thou la la, ca ne va pas.
XXVIII
Late in August Sara Lee broke her engagement with Harvey. She had been
away, at Cousin Jennie's, for a month, and for the first time since her
return she had had time to think. In the little suburban town there
were long hours of quiet when Cousin Jennie mended on the porch and Aunt
Harriet, enjoying a sort of reflected glory from Sara Lee, presided
at Red Cross meetings.
Sara Lee decided to send for Harvey, and he came for a week-end, arriving
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Enchanted Island of Yew by L. Frank Baum: have a sword."
She plucked a twig from a near-by tree and cast it upon the ground at
her feet. Again she waved her wand--and the twig turned to a gleaming
sword, richly engraved, that seemed to the silent watchers to tremble
slightly in its sheath, as if its heart of steel throbbed with hopes
of battles to come.
"And now I must have shield and armor, said the fairy, gaily. "This
will make a shield,"--and she stripped a sheet of loose bark from a
tree-trunk,--"but for armor I must have something better. Will you
give me your cloak?"
This appeal was made to Seseley, and the baron's daughter drew her
The Enchanted Island of Yew |
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 Sophist by Plato: Aristotle's Architectonic, which seems, however, to have passed into an
imaginary science of essence, and no longer to retain any relation to other
branches of knowledge. Of such a science, whether described as
'philosophia prima,' the science of ousia, logic or metaphysics,
philosophers have often dreamed. But even now the time has not arrived
when the anticipation of Plato can be realized. Though many a thinker has
framed a 'hierarchy of the sciences,' no one has as yet found the higher
science which arrays them in harmonious order, giving to the organic and
inorganic, to the physical and moral, their respective limits, and showing
how they all work together in the world and in man.
Plato arranges in order the stages of knowledge and of existence. They are
|
