| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: hazel copse also, in which my brother Henry used to gather nuts,
thinking little that he was to die in an Indian jungle in quest
of rupees.
There is so much more of remembrance about the little walk, that
--as I stop, rest on my crutch-headed cane, and look round with
that species of comparison between the thing I was and that which
I now am--it almost induces me to doubt my own identity; until I
find myself in face of the honeysuckle porch of Aunt Margaret's
dwelling, with its irregularity of front, and its odd, projecting
latticed windows, where the workmen seem to have made it a study
that no one of them should resemble another in form, size, or in
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: blowing on our left before, but now it is straight in my face.
Drive to the right,' he repeated with decision.
Vasili Andreevich took his advice and turned to the right, but
still there was no road. They went on in that direction for
some time. The wind was as fierce as ever and it was snowing
lightly.
'It seems, Vasili Andreevich, that we have gone quite astray,'
Nikita suddenly remarked, as if it were a pleasant thing.
'What is that?' he added, pointing to some potato vines that
showed up from under the snow.
Vasili Andreevich stopped the perspiring horse, whose deep
Master and Man |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: Stratford Bridge on the River Stour, which parts Suffolk from
Essex, about six miles from Colchester, on the road from Ipswich to
London. These droves, as they say, generally contain from three
hundred to a thousand each drove; so that one may suppose them to
contain five hundred one with another, which is one hundred and
fifty thousand in all; and yet this is one of the least passages,
the numbers which travel by Newmarket Heath and the open country
and the forest, and also the numbers that come by Sudbury and Clare
being many more.
For the further supplies of the markets of London with poultry, of
which these countries particularly abound, they have within these
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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: nor science nor perception nor opinion appertaining. One, then, is neither
named, nor uttered, nor known, nor perceived, nor imagined. But can all
this be true? 'I think not.'
1.b. Let us, however, commence the inquiry again. We have to work out all
the consequences which follow on the assumption that the one is. If one
is, one partakes of being, which is not the same with one; the words
'being' and 'one' have different meanings. Observe the consequence: In
the one of being or the being of one are two parts, being and one, which
form one whole. And each of the two parts is also a whole, and involves
the other, and may be further subdivided into one and being, and is
therefore not one but two; and thus one is never one, and in this way the
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