| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Memorabilia by Xenophon: kinds of animals, and turn them to account as fellow-workers in war
and for other purposes.
Yes, I cannot but agree with what you say (he answered), when I see
that animals so much stronger than man become so subservient to his
hand that he can use them as he lists.
Soc. And as we reflect on the infinite beauty and utility and the
variety of nature, what are we to say of the fact that man has been
endowed with sensibilities which correspond with this diversity,
whereby we take our fill of every blessing;[17] or, again, this
implanted faculty of reasoning, which enables us to draw inferences
concerning the things which we perceive, and by aid of memory to
The Memorabilia |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: another with a thousand little stings of womanish spite, were
given to understand that each of their hearts was a nest of
diminutive snakes, which did quite as much mischief as one great
one.
But nothing seemed to please Roderick better than to lay hold of
a person infected with jealousy, which he represented as an
enormous green reptile, with an ice-cold length of body, and the
sharpest sting of any snake save one.
"And what one is that?" asked a by-stander, overhearing him.
It was a dark-browed man who put the question; he had an evasive
eye, which in the course of a dozen years had looked no mortal
Mosses From An Old Manse |
