| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: meaning of them, an explanation of the nature and origin of knowledge, will
always continue to be one of the first problems of philosophy.
Plato also left behind him a most potent instrument, the forms of logic--
arms ready for use, but not yet taken out of their armoury. They were the
late birth of the early Greek philosophy, and were the only part of it
which has had an uninterrupted hold on the mind of Europe. Philosophies
come and go; but the detection of fallacies, the framing of definitions,
the invention of methods still continue to be the main elements of the
reasoning process.
Modern philosophy, like ancient, begins with very simple conceptions. It
is almost wholly a reflection on self. It might be described as a
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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 Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: Any one who forms a clear idea of this huge college, with its monastic
buildings in the heart of a little town, and the four plots in which
we were distributed as by a monastic rule, will easily conceive of the
excitement that we felt at the arrival of a new boy, a passenger
suddenly embarked on the ship. No young duchess, on her first
appearance at Court, was ever more spitefully criticised than the new
boy by the youths in his division. Usually during the evening play-
hour before prayers, those sycophants who were accustomed to
ingratiate themselves with the Fathers who took it in turns two and
two for a week to keep an eye on us, would be the first to hear on
trustworthy authority: "There will be a new boy to-morrow!" and then
 Louis Lambert |