| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: expended in the same proportion as those effects are produced; and
hence arises the impossibility of obtaining by their agency a
perpetual effect; or in other words a perpetual motion. But the
electro-motive force, ascribed by Volta to the metals, when in
contact, is a force which, as long as a free course is allowed to
the electricity it sets in motion, is never expended, and continues
to be excited with undiminished power in the production of a
never-ceasing effect. Against the truth of such a supposition the
probabilities are all but infinite.' When this argument, which he
employed independently, had clearly fixed itself in his mind,
Faraday never cared to experiment further on the source of
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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 Philebus by Plato: has nevertheless already often deserted me and left me helpless in the hour
of need.
PROTARCHUS: Tell us what that is.
SOCRATES: One which may be easily pointed out, but is by no means easy of
application; it is the parent of all the discoveries in the arts.
PROTARCHUS: Tell us what it is.
SOCRATES: A gift of heaven, which, as I conceive, the gods tossed among
men by the hands of a new Prometheus, and therewith a blaze of light; and
the ancients, who were our betters and nearer the gods than we are, handed
down the tradition, that whatever things are said to be are composed of one
and many, and have the finite and infinite implanted in them: seeing,
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