| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: become so familiar to us that we regard the thing signified by them as
absolutely fixed and defined. These are some of the illusions from which
Hegel delivers us by placing us above ourselves, by teaching us to analyze
the growth of 'what we are pleased to call our minds,' by reverting to a
time when our present distinctions of thought and language had no
existence.
Of the great dislike and childish impatience of his system which would be
aroused among his opponents, he was fully aware, and would often anticipate
the jests which the rest of the world, 'in the superfluity of their wits,'
were likely to make upon him. Men are annoyed at what puzzles them; they
think what they cannot easily understand to be full of danger. Many a
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: is called a lover because he partakes of it. For, as has been already
said, every soul of man has in the way of nature beheld true being; this
was the condition of her passing into the form of man. But all souls do
not easily recall the things of the other world; they may have seen them
for a short time only, or they may have been unfortunate in their earthly
lot, and, having had their hearts turned to unrighteousness through some
corrupting influence, they may have lost the memory of the holy things
which once they saw. Few only retain an adequate remembrance of them; and
they, when they behold here any image of that other world, are rapt in
amazement; but they are ignorant of what this rapture means, because they
do not clearly perceive. For there is no light of justice or temperance or
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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 The Message by Honore de Balzac: came to take the seat beside me from preference, listened to my
reasoning with inoffensive smiles. An approximate nearness of
age, a similarity in ways of thinking, a common love of fresh
air, and of the rich landscape scenery through which the coach
was lumbering along,--these things, together with an
indescribable magnetic something, drew us before long into one of
those short-lived traveller's intimacies, in which we unbend with
the more complacency because the intercourse is by its very
nature transient, and makes no implicit demands upon the future.
We had not come thirty leagues before we were talking of women
and love. Then, with all the circumspection demanded in such
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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 De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: proverbs and phrases of those who have sought to give me
consolation as dust and ashes in my mouth, the memory of that
little, lovely, silent act of love has unsealed for me all the
wells of pity: made the desert blossom like a rose, and brought me
out of the bitterness of lonely exile into harmony with the
wounded, broken, and great heart of the world. When people are
able to understand, not merely how beautiful -'s action was, but
why it meant so much to me, and always will mean so much, then,
perhaps, they will realise how and in what spirit they should
approach me. . . .
The poor are wise, more charitable, more kind, more sensitive than
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