| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: There are several passages which are either corrupt or extremely ill-
expressed. But there is a modern interest in the subject of the dialogue;
and it is a good example of a short spurious work, which may be attributed
to the second or third century before Christ.
ALCIBIADES II
by
Platonic Imitator (see Appendix II above)
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Socrates and Alcibiades.
SOCRATES: Are you going, Alcibiades, to offer prayer to Zeus?
ALCIBIADES: Yes, Socrates, I am.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Anthem by Ayn Rand: brothers are dull, and never do they look
one another in the eyes. The shoulders
of our brothers are hunched, and their
muscles are drawn, as if their bodies were
shrinking and wished to shrink out of sight.
And a word steals into our mind, as we look
upon our brothers, and that word is fear.
There is fear hanging in the air of the
sleeping halls, and in the air of the streets.
Fear walks through the City, fear without name,
without shape. All men feel it and none dare to speak.
Anthem |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin: a man beginning to cry, with the eyebrow on the same side
rendered oblique, which is characteristic of misery, the expression
was recognized by a greater proportional number of persons.
Out of twenty-three persons, fourteen answered correctly,
"sorrow," "distress," "grief," "just going to cry,"
"endurance of pain," &c. On the other hand, nine persons either
could form no opinion or were entirely wrong, answering,
"cunning leer," "jocund," "looking at an intense light,"
"looking at a distant object," &c.
As the upper lip is much drawn up during the act of screaming, in the
manner just explained, the depressor muscles of the angles of the mouth
Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals |
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 Sophist by Plato: every process of reflection we seem to require a standing ground, and in
the attempt to obtain a complete analysis we lose all fixedness. If, for
example, the mind is viewed as the complex of ideas, or the difference
between things and persons denied, such an analysis may be justified from
the point of view of Hegel: but we shall find that in the attempt to
criticize thought we have lost the power of thinking, and, like the
Heracliteans of old, have no words in which our meaning can be expressed.
Such an analysis may be of value as a corrective of popular language or
thought, but should still allow us to retain the fundamental distinctions
of philosophy.
In the Hegelian system ideas supersede persons. The world of thought,
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