| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: the stranger and took his life. It was an immense act of SELF-
SACRIFICE (as per the usual definition), for he did not want to
do it, and he never would have done it if he could have bought a
contented spirit and an unworried mind at smaller cost. But we
are so made that we will pay ANYTHING for that contentment--even
another man's life.
Y.M. You spoke a moment ago of TRAINED consciences. You mean
that we are not BORN with consciences competent to guide us aright?
O.M. If we were, children and savages would know right from wrong,
and not have to be taught it.
Y.M. But consciences can be TRAINED?
What is Man? |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: words and things. Hence we are led to infer, that the view of Socrates is
not the less Plato's own, because not based upon the ideas; 2nd, that
Plato's theory of language is not inconsistent with the rest of his
philosophy.
2. We do not deny that Socrates is partly in jest and partly in earnest.
He is discoursing in a high-flown vein, which may be compared to the
'dithyrambics of the Phaedrus.' They are mysteries of which he is
speaking, and he professes a kind of ludicrous fear of his imaginary
wisdom. When he is arguing out of Homer, about the names of Hector's son,
or when he describes himself as inspired or maddened by Euthyphro, with
whom he has been sitting from the early dawn (compare Phaedrus and Lysias;
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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 Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle: crash of the descending blade. Somebody shot from behind him, and
at the same moment he saw some one else strike the pirate.
Blackbeard staggered again, and this time there was a great gash
upon his neck. Then one of Maynard's own men tumbled headlong
upon him. He fell with the man, but almost instantly he had
scrambled to his feet again, and as he did so he saw that the
pirate sloop had drifted a little away from them, and that their
grappling irons had evidently parted. His hand was smarting as
though struck with the lash of a whip. He looked around him; the
pirate captain was nowhere to be seen--yes, there he was, lying
by the rail. He raised himself upon his elbow, and the
Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates |
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 Theaetetus by Plato: world, in the various characters of sophist, lawyer, statesman, speaker,
and the philosopher,--between opinion and knowledge,--between the
conventional and the true.
The greater part of the dialogue is devoted to setting up and throwing down
definitions of science and knowledge. Proceeding from the lower to the
higher by three stages, in which perception, opinion, reasoning are
successively examined, we first get rid of the confusion of the idea of
knowledge and specific kinds of knowledge,--a confusion which has been
already noticed in the Lysis, Laches, Meno, and other dialogues. In the
infancy of logic, a form of thought has to be invented before the content
can be filled up. We cannot define knowledge until the nature of
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