| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: Egypt, betrayed her country to the Roman; and thenceforth the
Alexandrians became slaves in all but name.
And now that Alexandria has become a tributary province, is it to share
the usual lot of enslaved countries and lose all originality and vigour
of thought? Not so. From this point, strangely enough, it begins to
have a philosophy of its own. Hitherto it has been importing Greek
thought into Egypt and Syria, even to the furthest boundaries of Persia;
and the whole East has become Greek: but it has received little in
return. The Indian Gymnosophists, or Brahmins, had little or no effect
on Greek philosophy, except in the case of Pyrrho: the Persian Dualism
still less. The Egyptian symbolic nature-worship had been too gross to
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Baby Mine by Margaret Mayo: in his chair, the telephone bell rang violently. Never guessing
who was at the other end of the wire, he picked up his receiver
and answered.
"What?" he exclaimed in surprise. "Mrs. Hardy?" Several times
he opened his lips to ask a question, but it was apparent that
the person at the other end of the line had a great deal to say
and very little time to say it, and it was only after repeated
attempts that he managed to get in a word or so edgewise.
"What's happened?" he asked.
"Say nothing to anybody," was Zoie's noncommittal answer, "not
even to Aggie. Jump in a taxi and come as quickly as you can."
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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 American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: more than the vaguest notion of their meaning.
Sweet and comely are the maidens of Devonshire; delicate and of
gracious seeming those who live in the pleasant places of London;
fascinating for all their demureness the damsels of France,
clinging closely to their mothers, with large eyes wondering at
the wicked world; excellent in her own place and to those who
understand her is the Anglo-Indian "spin" in her second season;
but the girls of America are above and beyond them all. They are
clever, they can talk--yea, it is said that they think.
Certainly they have an appearance of so doing which is
delightfully deceptive.
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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 Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: perfection, of the want of which I was conscious, and thus could of myself
have become infinite, eternal, immutable, omniscient, all-powerful, and,
in fine, have possessed all the perfections which I could recognize in
God. For in order to know the nature of God (whose existence has been
established by the preceding reasonings), as far as my own nature
permitted, I had only to consider in reference to all the properties of
which I found in my mind some idea, whether their possession was a mark
of perfection; and I was assured that no one which indicated any
imperfection was in him, and that none of the rest was awanting. Thus I
perceived that doubt, inconstancy, sadness, and such like, could not be
found in God, since I myself would have been happy to be free from them.
Reason Discourse |
