| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: concerning the date and authorship of the writings which are ascribed to
him. And several of the citations of Aristotle omit the name of Plato, and
some of them omit the name of the dialogue from which they are taken.
Prior, however, to the enquiry about the writings of a particular author,
general considerations which equally affect all evidence to the genuineness
of ancient writings are the following: Shorter works are more likely to
have been forged, or to have received an erroneous designation, than longer
ones; and some kinds of composition, such as epistles or panegyrical
orations, are more liable to suspicion than others; those, again, which
have a taste of sophistry in them, or the ring of a later age, or the
slighter character of a rhetorical exercise, or in which a motive or some
|
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 Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: ready distrust is regarded as the sign of a "bad character," and
consequently as an imprudence, here among us, beyond the middle-
class world and its Yeas and Nays, what should prevent our being
imprudent and saying: the philosopher has at length a RIGHT to
"bad character," as the being who has hitherto been most befooled
on earth--he is now under OBLIGATION to distrustfulness, to the
wickedest squinting out of every abyss of suspicion.--Forgive me
the joke of this gloomy grimace and turn of expression; for I
myself have long ago learned to think and estimate differently
with regard to deceiving and being deceived, and I keep at least
a couple of pokes in the ribs ready for the blind rage with which
Beyond Good and Evil |
