| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: level. The environment helps, in the one case as in the other,
to the shaping of the development. Purely physical in the first,
it is both physical and psychical in the second, the two reacting on
each other. But in either case it is only a constraining condition,
not the divine impulse itself. Precisely, then, as in the organism,
this subtle spirit checked in one direction finds a way to advance
in another, and produces in consequence among an originally similar
set of bodies a gradual separation into species which grow wider
with time, so in brain evolution a like force for like reasons tends
inevitably to an ever-increasing individualization.
Now what evidence have we that this analogy holds? Let us look at
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: from Phoebe's hand. That was all; for at the second that his
decision came, he looked up and saw, ten yards from him, the man
who had been in the cafi, and with his jump of astonishment the
glass fell from his uplifted hand. There the man half sat, half
leaned against a pile of pillows on the corner divan. His face
was cast in the same yellow wax as in the cafi, neither the dull,
pasty color of a dead manrather a sort of virile pallornor
unhealthy, you'd have called it; but like a strong man who'd
worked in a mine or done night shifts in a damp climate. Amory
looked him over carefully and later he could have drawn him after
a fashion, down to the merest details. His mouth was the kind
This Side of Paradise |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: it, and science warns you that it is not really hot or luminous,--for
science is of some use," he added, looking at Capraja.
"Not so bad for a Frenchman and a doctor," said Capraja, patting the
foreigner on the shoulder. "You have in those words explained the
thing which Europeans least understand in all Dante: his Beatrice.
Yes, Beatrice, that ideal figure, the queen of the poet's fancies,
chosen above all the elect, consecrated with tears, deified by memory,
and for ever young in the presence of ineffectual desire!"
"Prince," said the Duke to Emilio, "come and sup with me. You cannot
refuse the poor Neapolitan whom you have robbed both of his wife and
of his mistress."
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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 Charmides by Plato: subjects discussed in these are Utility, Communism, the Kantian and
Hegelian philosophies, Psychology, and the Origin of Language. (There have
been added also in the Third Edition remarks on other subjects. A list of
the most important of these additions is given at the end of this Preface.)
Ancient and modern philosophy throw a light upon one another: but they
should be compared, not confounded. Although the connexion between them is
sometimes accidental, it is often real. The same questions are discussed
by them under different conditions of language and civilization; but in
some cases a mere word has survived, while nothing or hardly anything of
the pre-Socratic, Platonic, or Aristotelian meaning is retained. There are
other questions familiar to the moderns, which have no place in ancient
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