The Elements

The doc­trine of the ele­ments is not merely an excit­ing chapter in chem­istry. Every one of the golden civil­isa­tions that lived in har­mony with nature con­cerned itself with the doc­trine of the ele­ments, the factors that build the world. For the Greeks the four ele­ments are earth, water, fire and air, to which India adds ether, subtler in nature, as the fifth, while the Chinese tra­di­tion sets wood and metal beside earth, water and fire. Earth, water, air and fire can be pic­tured as the four corners of a pyr­am­id's base, and the fifth ele­ment, ether, cor­res­ponds to the pyr­am­id's apex, which holds the sys­tem togeth­er and, as it were, con­tains all the ele­ments with­in itself.

Earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intel­lect and false ego – these eight make up My sep­ar­ated mater­i­al energy. Bey­ond this lower nature there exists a high­er energy of Mine, the liv­ing beings who struggle with mater­i­al nature and sus­tain the uni­verse. (Bhagavad Gita 7.4–5.)

Nature is regarded as the pass­ive factor of the uni­verse. It is given a fem­in­ine qual­ity, a recept­ive char­ac­ter, and it is likened, too, to the cup of the lotus flower that beck­ons the bee. Else­where nature is regarded as an act­ive but blind factor, to which spir­it, oth­er­wise pass­ive, is joined as the mas­cu­line factor, so that from the high­er syn­thes­is of the two, through the ele­ments, earthly life becomes mani­fest.

The prim­or­di­al state of the uni­verse pre­sup­poses a bal­ance of the ele­ments. Every ele­ment is needed for the har­mo­ni­ous work­ing of life: without solid­ity, vis­cos­ity, energy and air there is no life. Life, how­ever, pre­sup­poses the sci­ence of pro­por­tion. Too much or too little of any ele­ment is of no bene­fit. With the ele­ments, the mean is the neces­sary con­di­tion of har­mo­ni­ous work­ing. If the con­stitu­ent ele­ments of earth, water, fire and air dwindle, the con­sequence is bar­ren­ness, drought, cold and suf­foc­a­tion, but if they break loose, they become earth­quake, flood, wild­fire and gale. It is the bal­ance of the ele­ments that gives the soul the chance to run its earthly course.

Aris­totle