| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: acquaintance whatever with American ships, not I so I couldn't
go against your knowledge. It's horrible enough for me.
. . . But the queerest part is that those fellows seemed to have
some idea the man was hidden aboard here. They had really.
Did you ever hear of such a thing?"
"Preposterous--isn't it?"
We were walking to and fro athwart the quarter-deck. No one of the crew
forward could be seen (the day was Sunday), and the mate pursued:
"There was some little dispute about it. Our chaps took offense.
`As if we would harbor a thing like that,' they said.
`Wouldn't you like to look for him in our coal-hole?' Quite a tiff.
The Secret Sharer |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: notions--the object of relation is outside of them; at any rate they can
only have relation to themselves in the form of that object. Whether there
are any such cases of reflex relation or not, and whether that sort of
knowledge which we term Temperance is of this reflex nature, has yet to be
determined by the great metaphysician. But even if knowledge can know
itself, how does the knowledge of what we know imply the knowledge of what
we do not know? Besides, knowledge is an abstraction only, and will not
inform us of any particular subject, such as medicine, building, and the
like. It may tell us that we or other men know something, but can never
tell us what we know.
Admitting that there is a knowledge of what we know and of what we do not
|
