| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: STRANGER: Yes, the same sort of likeness which a wolf, who is the fiercest
of animals, has to a dog, who is the gentlest. But he who would not be
found tripping, ought to be very careful in this matter of comparisons, for
they are most slippery things. Nevertheless, let us assume that the
Sophists are the men. I say this provisionally, for I think that the line
which divides them will be marked enough if proper care is taken.
THEAETETUS: Likely enough.
STRANGER: Let us grant, then, that from the discerning art comes
purification, and from purification let there be separated off a part which
is concerned with the soul; of this mental purification instruction is a
portion, and of instruction education, and of education, that refutation of
|
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 Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: suddenly ascertained that the Bible had from the outset asserted
that antiquity; and in our own day we have seen an elegant
popular writer perverting the testimony of the rocks and
distorting the Elohistic cosmogony of the Pentateuch, until the
twain have been made to furnish what Bacon long ago described as
"a heretical religion and a false philosophy." Now just as in the
popular thought of the present day the ancient Elohist is
accredited with a knowledge of modern geology and astronomy, so
in the opinion of the fourth evangelist and his contemporaries
the doctrine of the Logos-Christ was implicitly contained in the
Old Testament and in the early traditions concerning Jesus, and
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
