| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: correct others, because they were dear to Him. It became clear to
him that all the dreadful evil he had been witnessing in prisons
and jails and the quiet self-satisfaction of the perpetrators of
this evil were the consequences of men trying to do what was
impossible; trying to correct evil while being evil themselves;
vicious men were trying to correct other vicious men, and thought
they could do it by using mechanical means, and the only
consequence of all this was that the needs and the cupidity of
some men induced them to take up this so-called punishment and
correction as a profession, and have themselves become utterly
corrupt, and go on unceasingly depraving those whom they torment.
Resurrection |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle: down upon his face. He tried to raise himself--he fell down
again. There was a report and a cloud of smoke, and when it
cleared away Blackbeard had staggered up again. He was a terrible
figure his head nodding down upon his breast. Somebody shot
again, and then the swaying figure toppled and fell. It lay
still for a moment--then rolled over-- then lay still again.
There was a loud splash of men jumping overboard, and then,
almost instantly, the cry of "Quarter! quarter!" The lieutenant
ran to the edge of the vessel. It was as he had thought: the
grappling irons of the pirate sloop had parted, and it had
drifted away. The few pirates who had been left aboard of the
Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Blix by Frank Norris: reach of the ocean floor, the unbroken plane of blue sky, and the
bare green slope of land--three immensities, gigantic, vast,
primordial. It was no place for trival ideas and thoughts of
little things. The mind harked back unconsciously to the broad,
simpler, basic emotions, the fundamental instincts of the race.
The huge spaces of earth and air and water carried with them a
feeling of kindly but enormous force--elemental force, fresh,
untutored, new, and young. There was buoyancy in it; a fine,
breathless sense of uplifting and exhilaration; a sensation as of
bigness and a return to the homely, human, natural life, to the
primitive old impulses, irresistible, changeless, and unhampered;
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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 Parmenides by Plato: once, and this, while it is one, will never happen.
No.
Then the one cannot touch itself any more than it can be two?
It cannot.
Neither can it touch others.
Why not?
The reason is, that whatever is to touch another must be in separation
from, and next to, that which it is to touch, and no third thing can be
between them.
True.
Two things, then, at the least are necessary to make contact possible?
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