| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Princess by Alfred Tennyson: A little space was left between the horns,
Through which I clambered o'er at top with pain,
Dropt on the sward, and up the linden walks,
And, tost on thoughts that changed from hue to hue,
Now poring on the glowworm, now the star,
I paced the terrace, till the Bear had wheeled
Through a great arc his seven slow suns.
A step
Of lightest echo, then a loftier form
Than female, moving through the uncertain gloom,
Disturbed me with the doubt 'if this were she,'
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Mountains by Stewart Edward White: was discovered. Dinkey tore a frantic mile down the
side hill. Bullet, his nostrils wide, his ears back, raced
parallel in the boulder-strewn stream-bed, wonderful
in his avoidance of bad footing, precious in his
selection of good, interested in the game, indignant at the
wayward Dinkey, profoundly contemptuous of the
besotted mule. At a bend in the canon interposed
a steep bank. Up this we scrambled, dirt and stones
flying. I had just time to bend low along the saddle
when, with the ripping and tearing and scratching of
thorns, we burst blindly through a thicket. In the
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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 Meno by Plato: is the science of sciences, which are also ideas, and under either aspect
require to be defined. They can only be thought of in due proportion when
conceived in relation to one another. They are the glasses through which
the kingdoms of science are seen, but at a distance. All the greatest
minds, except when living in an age of reaction against them, have
unconsciously fallen under their power.
The account of the Platonic ideas in the Meno is the simplest and clearest,
and we shall best illustrate their nature by giving this first and then
comparing the manner in which they are described elsewhere, e.g. in the
Phaedrus, Phaedo, Republic; to which may be added the criticism of them in
the Parmenides, the personal form which is attributed to them in the
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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 Lesser Hippias by Plato: Plato and his imitators was not so perceptible as to ourselves. The
Memorabilia of Xenophon and the Dialogues of Plato are but a part of a
considerable Socratic literature which has passed away. And we must
consider how we should regard the question of the genuineness of a
particular writing, if this lost literature had been preserved to us.
These considerations lead us to adopt the following criteria of
genuineness: (1) That is most certainly Plato's which Aristotle attributes
to him by name, which (2) is of considerable length, of (3) great
excellence, and also (4) in harmony with the general spirit of the Platonic
writings. But the testimony of Aristotle cannot always be distinguished
from that of a later age (see above); and has various degrees of
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