| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: strongest,' to 'the survival of the fittest,' in this as in the other
realms of nature.
These are some of the reflections which the modern philosophy of language
suggests to us about the powers of the human mind and the forces and
influences by which the efforts of men to utter articulate sounds were
inspired. Yet in making these and similar generalizations we may note also
dangers to which we are exposed. (1) There is the confusion of ideas with
facts--of mere possibilities, and generalities, and modes of conception
with actual and definite knowledge. The words 'evolution,' 'birth,' 'law,'
development,' 'instinct,' 'implicit,' 'explicit,' and the like, have a
false clearness or comprehensiveness, which adds nothing to our knowledge.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: and dogs for all the things that directly excite his curiosity.
The evil of sending scholars into new and dangerous hunting-
domains, where courage, sagacity, and subtlety in every sense are
required, is that they are no longer serviceable just when the
"BIG hunt," and also the great danger commences,--it is precisely
then that they lose their keen eye and nose. In order, for
instance, to divine and determine what sort of history the
problem of KNOWLEDGE AND CONSCIENCE has hitherto had in the souls
of homines religiosi, a person would perhaps himself have to
possess as profound, as bruised, as immense an experience as the
intellectual conscience of Pascal; and then he would still
Beyond Good and Evil |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: subsistence. And in that day, the death rate and the birth rate
will have to balance. Men will have to die, or be prevented from
being born. Undoubtedly a higher quality of life will obtain, and
also a slowly decreasing fecundity. But this decrease will be so
slow that the pressure against subsistence will remain. The
control of progeny will be one of the most important problems of
man and one of the most important functions of the state. Men
will simply be not permitted to be born.
Disease, from time to time, will ease the pressure. Diseases are
parasites, and it must not be forgotten that just as there are
drifts in the world of man, so are there drifts in the world of
|
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 Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy: be neither brought nor rolled to its place; and accord-
ingly two men were to be observed dragging and heaving
it in by chains and levers as the hour of assembly drew
near.
II
In spite of all this, the spirit of revelry was wanting
In the atmosphere of the house. Such a thing had
never been attempted before by its owner, and it was
now done as by a wrench. Intended gaieties would
insist upon appearing like solemn grandeurs, the organ-
ization of the whole effort was carried out coldly, by
Far From the Madding Crowd |
