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Show ADMINISTBATIVE REPORT LXXXV In a similar manner, which we can not stop to explain fully, all the attributes of bodies as properties or qualities are assigned to regions by wildwood men and shepherd men. The increasing knowledge of the world leads to a geographic knowledge of immense distances on the horizontal plane of the earth as it is then supposed to be; but the cardinal attributes still continue to be grouped about the one which seems to be the most conspicuous A survival of this classification of attributes in world schemes still remains in rhodern time when attributes of good are assigned to a world of space, as the heaven above, and attributes of evil are assigned to the world below- hell. The attributes which were assigned to the cardinal worlds are grouped about the most conspicuous attribute, as the cardinal worlds are abandoned owing to an increasing knowledge of geography. Finally, they settle down into four elements; the cardinal worlds thus become elements- earth, air, fire, and water- and the bodies of the worlds are believed to be composed of these elements in varying proportions. In Greek and Roman classics we find much about these four elements; but the development of four elements out of four worlds belongs largely to barbarism, though perhaps it is not fully completed until the stage of monarchy is reached. Necromancy- In the monarchical stage of society the four elements- earth, air, fire, and water- play a very important r6le. It is now the theory that bodies are composed of these elements, and it is a theory that the difference between bodies depends on the different proportions of these elements which they severally present. The cardinal worlds thus become cardinal elements, and a birthmark remains when they are put in antithetic pairs. Earth is opposed to air, and fire is opposed t o water. This stage of society is the stage of alchemy in the philosophy of bodies. The wondrous transmutations that appear in nature are explained as alchemical changes in combining or freeing the elements. The stories now invented are stories of necromancy in which theories of ghosts and theories of alchemy are compounded. This is also the age of chivalry, |