| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: though sometimes described as Spirit or 'Geist,' is really impersonal. The
minds of men are to be regarded as one mind, or more correctly as a
succession of ideas. Any comprehensive view of the world must necessarily
be general, and there may be a use with a view to comprehensiveness in
dropping individuals and their lives and actions. In all things, if we
leave out details, a certain degree of order begins to appear; at any rate
we can make an order which, with a little exaggeration or disproportion in
some of the parts, will cover the whole field of philosophy. But are we
therefore justified in saying that ideas are the causes of the great
movement of the world rather than the personalities which conceived them?
The great man is the expression of his time, and there may be peculiar
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: philosophers have often dreamed. But even now the time has not arrived
when the anticipation of Plato can be realized. Though many a thinker has
framed a 'hierarchy of the sciences,' no one has as yet found the higher
science which arrays them in harmonious order, giving to the organic and
inorganic, to the physical and moral, their respective limits, and showing
how they all work together in the world and in man.
Plato arranges in order the stages of knowledge and of existence. They are
the steps or grades by which he rises from sense and the shadows of sense
to the idea of beauty and good. Mind is in motion as well as at rest
(Soph.); and may be described as a dialectical progress which passes from
one limit or determination of thought to another and back again to 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 Statesman by Plato: celestial influences, something else happened to be better for them,--would
he not venture to suggest this new remedy, although not contemplated in his
former prescription? Would he persist in observing the original law,
neither himself giving any new commandments, nor the patient daring to do
otherwise than was prescribed, under the idea that this course only was
healthy and medicinal, all others noxious and heterodox? Viewed in the
light of science and true art, would not all such enactments be utterly
ridiculous?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Utterly.
STRANGER: And if he who gave laws, written or unwritten, determining what
was good or bad, honourable or dishonourable, just or unjust, to the tribes
Statesman |
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 Phaedo by Plato: gives the air as a support to the earth, which is a sort of broad trough.
Any power which in arranging them as they are arranges them for the best
never enters into their minds; and instead of finding any superior strength
in it, they rather expect to discover another Atlas of the world who is
stronger and more everlasting and more containing than the good;--of the
obligatory and containing power of the good they think nothing; and yet
this is the principle which I would fain learn if any one would teach me.
But as I have failed either to discover myself, or to learn of any one
else, the nature of the best, I will exhibit to you, if you like, what I
have found to be the second best mode of enquiring into the cause.
I should very much like to hear, he replied.
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