| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Memorabilia by Xenophon: heaven knows how." See Jowett, "Plato," ii. p. 416 (ed. 2).
Soc. Well (look at it like this). Suppose a man to be anxious to speak
the truth, but he is never able to hold the same language about a
thing for two minutes together. First he says: "The road is towards
the east," and then he says, "No, it's towards the west"; or, running
up a column of figures, now he makes the product this, and again he
makes it that, now more, now less--what do you think of such a man?
Euth. Heaven help us! clearly he does not know what he thought he
knew.
Soc. And you know the appellation given to certain people--
"slavish,"[39] or, "little better than a slave?"
The Memorabilia |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: and vanished by this time. These, if ever, are the brave, free
days of destroyed landmarks, while the ingenious minds are busy
inventing the forms of the new beacons which, it is consoling to
think, will be set up presently in the old places. But what is
interesting to a writer is the possession of an inward certitude
that literary criticism will never die, for man (so variously
defined) is, before everything else, a critical animal. And as
long as distinguished minds are ready to treat it in the spirit
of high adventure literary criticism shall appeal to us with all
the charm and wisdom of a well-told tale of personal experience.
For Englishmen especially, of all the races of the earth, a task,
A Personal Record |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: the good; for that which was once both good and evil has now become evil
only, and the good was supposed to have no friendship with the evil?
None.
And therefore we say that those who are already wise, whether Gods or men,
are no longer lovers of wisdom; nor can they be lovers of wisdom who are
ignorant to the extent of being evil, for no evil or ignorant person is a
lover of wisdom. There remain those who have the misfortune to be
ignorant, but are not yet hardened in their ignorance, or void of
understanding, and do not as yet fancy that they know what they do not
know: and therefore those who are the lovers of wisdom are as yet neither
good nor bad. But the bad do not love wisdom any more than the good; for,
Lysis |
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 Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs: trenches, as though this had been the original form of
dwellings which was slowly giving way to the drier and
airier surface domiciles. In these trench habitations I saw
a survival of the military trenches which formed so famous a
part of the operation of the warring nations during the
twentieth century.
The women wore a single light deerskin about their hips, for
it was summer, and quite warm. The men, too, were clothed
in a single garment, usually the pelt of some beast of prey.
The hair of both men and women was confined by a rawhide
thong passing about the forehead and tied behind. In this
Lost Continent |
