| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs: the River Tamar we motored through a solitude as unbroken as
that which rested upon the waters of the Channel. For all
we could see, there was no indication that man had ever set
his foot upon this silent coast.
I was nonplused, and then, for the first time, there crept
over me an intuition of the truth.
Here was no sign of war. As far as this portion of the
Devon coast was concerned, that seemed to have been over for
many years, but neither were there any people. Yet I could
not find it within myself to believe that I should find no
inhabitants in England. Reasoning thus, I discovered that
Lost Continent |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: the brave. But if they give way to their sorrows, either they will be
suspected of not being our parents, or we of not being such as our
panegyrists declare. Let not either of the two alternatives happen, but
rather let them be our chief and true panegyrists, who show in their lives
that they are true men, and had men for their sons. Of old the saying,
"Nothing too much," appeared to be, and really was, well said. For he
whose happiness rests with himself, if possible, wholly, and if not, as far
as is possible,--who is not hanging in suspense on other men, or changing
with the vicissitude of their fortune,--has his life ordered for the best.
He is the temperate and valiant and wise; and when his riches come and go,
when his children are given and taken away, he will remember the proverb--
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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 Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: reason, but is sometimes to turn to the realisation of the ideals
on earth: yet, after all, the general character of the Platonic
method, which is what we are specially concerned with, is
essentially deductive and A PRIORI. And he himself, in the
building up of his Nephelococcygia, certainly starts with a [Greek
text which cannot be reproduced], making a clean sweep of all
history and all experience; and it was essentially as an A PRIORI
theorist that he is criticised by Aristotle, as we shall see later.
To proceed to closer details regarding the actual scheme of the
laws of political revolutions as drawn out by Plato, we must first
note that the primary cause of the decay of the ideal state is 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 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain: an autograph. I spoke to Clarence about it. By
George! I had to explain to him what it was. Then
he said nobody in the country could read or write but
a few dozen priests. Land! think of that.
There was another thing that troubled me a little.
Those multitudes presently began to agitate for another
miracle. That was natural. To be able to carry back
to their far homes the boast that they had seen the
man who could command the sun, riding in the
heavens, and be obeyed, would make them great in
the eyes of their neighbors, and envied by them all;
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |
