| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: makes the everlasting punishment of human beings depend on a brief moment
of time, or even on the accident of an accident. And he has escaped the
difficulty which has often beset divines, respecting the future destiny of
the meaner sort of men (Thersites and the like), who are neither very good
nor very bad, by not counting them worthy of eternal damnation.
We do Plato violence in pressing his figures of speech or chains of
argument; and not less so in asking questions which were beyond the horizon
of his vision, or did not come within the scope of his design. The main
purpose of the Gorgias is not to answer questions about a future world, but
to place in antagonism the true and false life, and to contrast the
judgments and opinions of men with judgment according to the truth. Plato
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: as they are groups of islanders it is impossible for their states to
meet together for united action, for the sea lies between them, and
the dominant power is master of the sea. And even if it were possible
for them to assemble in some single island unobserved, they would only
do so to perish by famine. And as to the states subject to Athens
which are not islanders, but situated on the continent, the larger are
held in check by need[3] and the small ones absolutely by fear, since
there is no state in existence which does not depend upon imports and
exports, and these she will forfeit if she does not lend a willing ear
to those who are masters by sea. In the next place, a power dominant
by sea can do certain things which a land power is debarred from
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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 The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: that morning, and the tall elm-trees, and the sleeping cows; and
after that he dreamt of nothing at all.
The reason of his falling into such a delightful sleep is very
simple; and yet hardly any one has found it out. It was merely
that the fairies took him.
Some people think that there are no fairies. Cousin Cramchild
tells little folks so in his Conversations. Well, perhaps there
are none - in Boston, U.S., where he was raised. There are only a
clumsy lot of spirits there, who can't make people hear without
thumping on the table: but they get their living thereby, and I
suppose that is all they want. And Aunt Agitate, in her Arguments
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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 The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: turned to the consolations of religion by reason of their own
wretchedness; Gautama sought its help touched by the woes of others
whom, in his own happy life journey, he chanced one day to come
across. Shocked by the sight of human disease, old age, and death,
sad facts to which hitherto he had been sedulously kept a stranger,
he renounced the world that he might find for it an escape from its
ills. But bliss, as he conceived it, lay not in wanting to be
something he was not, but in actual want of being. His quest for
mankind was immunity from suffering, not the active enjoyment of
life. In this negative way of looking at happiness, he acted in
strict conformity with the spirit of his world. For the doctrine of
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