The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: the fewest mistakes?
Erasistratus agreed to this.
SOCRATES: Then the wisest and those who do best and the most fortunate and
the richest would appear to be all one and the same, if wisdom is really
the most valuable of our possessions?
Yes, said Eryxias, interposing, but what use would it be if a man had the
wisdom of Nestor and wanted the necessaries of life, food and drink and
clothes and the like? Where would be the advantage of wisdom then? Or how
could he be the richest of men who might even have to go begging, because
he had not wherewithal to live?
I thought that what Eryxias was saying had some weight, and I replied,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: upon this place of death. For the ease of mine own conscience I
must search this matter out."
He therefore left the path, and walked somewhat fearfully across
the field. Though now so desolate, its soil was pressed down and
trampled by the thousand footsteps of those who had witnessed the
spectacle of that day, all of whom had now retired, leaving the
dead to their loneliness. The traveller, at length reached the
fir-tree, which from the middle upward was covered with living
branches, although a scaffold had been erected beneath, and other
preparations made for the work of death. Under this unhappy tree,
which in after times was believed to drop poison with its dew,
Twice Told Tales |