| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: used in every conceivable sense, any or every conclusion may be deduced
from them. The words 'one,' 'other,' 'being,' 'like,' 'same,' 'whole,' and
their opposites, have slightly different meanings, as they are applied to
objects of thought or objects of sense--to number, time, place, and to the
higher ideas of the reason;--and out of their different meanings this
'feast' of contradictions 'has been provided.'
...
The Parmenides of Plato belongs to a stage of philosophy which has passed
away. At first we read it with a purely antiquarian or historical
interest; and with difficulty throw ourselves back into a state of the
human mind in which Unity and Being occupied the attention of philosophers.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: I wish, said my father, raising his voice, the whole science of
fortification at the devil, with all its trumpery of saps, mines, blinds,
gabions, fausse-brays and cuvetts--
--They are foolish things--said my mother.
Now she had a way, which, by the bye, I would this moment give away my
purple jerkin, and my yellow slippers into the bargain, if some of your
reverences would imitate--and that was, never to refuse her assent and
consent to any proposition my father laid before her, merely because she
did not understand it, or had no ideas of the principal word or term of
art, upon which the tenet or proposition rolled. She contented herself
with doing all that her godfathers and godmothers promised for her--but no
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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 This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: instinct for paternity that Rosalind had stirred; the
half-sensual, half-neurotic quality of this autumn with Eleanor.
He felt that it would take all time, more than he could ever
spare, to glue these strange cumbersome pictures into the
scrap-book of his life. It was all like a banquet where he sat
for this half-hour of his youth and tried to enjoy brilliant
epicurean courses.
Dimly he promised himself a time where all should be welded
together. For months it seemed that he had alternated between
being borne along a stream of love or fascination, or left in an
eddy, and in the eddies he had not desired to think, rather to be
This Side of Paradise |
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 Hiero by Xenophon: capital[4] employed, or by means devised to make the resources of the
entire state[5] productive?
[4] Reading {idia}, al. {idia}, = "your capital privately employed."
[5] Lit. "of all citizens alike," "every single member of the state."
And next to speak of that which people hold to be the flower of
institutions, a pursuit both noble in itself and best befitting a
great man--I mean the art of breeding chariot-horses[6]--which would
reflect the greater lustre on you, that you personally[7] should train
and send to the great festal gatherings[8] more chariots than any
Hellene else? or rather that your state should boast more racehorse-
breeders than the rest of states, that from Syracuse the largest
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