| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: In the same man, in the same vessel abide
But since within this body even of ours
Stands fixed and appears arranged sure
Where soul and mind can each exist and grow,
Deny we must the more that they can dure
Outside the body and the breathing form
In rotting clods of earth, in the sun's fire,
In water, or in ether's skiey coasts.
Therefore these things no whit are furnished
With sense divine, since never can they be
With life-force quickened.
Of The Nature of Things |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: days and more, is truly Platonic.
Such discourses, if we may form a judgment from the three which are extant
(for the so-called Funeral Oration of Demosthenes is a bad and spurious
imitation of Thucydides and Lysias), conformed to a regular type. They
began with Gods and ancestors, and the legendary history of Athens, to
which succeeded an almost equally fictitious account of later times. The
Persian war usually formed the centre of the narrative; in the age of
Isocrates and Demosthenes the Athenians were still living on the glories of
Marathon and Salamis. The Menexenus veils in panegyric the weak places of
Athenian history. The war of Athens and Boeotia is a war of liberation;
the Athenians gave back the Spartans taken at Sphacteria out of kindness--
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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 Essays of Francis Bacon by Francis Bacon: das. And that this shoulld be, no doubt it is much,
in a man's self.
Of Usury
MANY have made witty invectives against
usury. They say that it is a pity, the devil
should have God's part, which is the tithe. That the
usurer is the greatest Sabbath-breaker, because his
plough goeth every Sunday. That the usurer is the
drone, that Virgil speaketh of;
Ignavum fucos pecus a praesepibus arcent.
That the usurer breaketh the first law, that was
Essays of Francis Bacon |
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 Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: it is entirely capitalists' wealth which supports unjust wars. Just
wars do not need so much money to support them; for most of the men
who wage such, wage them gratis; but for an unjust war, men's bodies
and souls have both to be bought; and the best tools of war for them
besides, which make such war costly to the maximum; not to speak of
the cost of base fear, and angry suspicion, between nations which
have not grace nor honesty enough in all their multitudes to buy an
hour's peace of mind with; as, at present, France and England,
purchasing of each other ten millions sterling worth of
consternation, annually (a remarkably light crop, half thorns and
half aspen leaves, sown, reaped, and granaried by the 'science' of
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