| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: EUTHYPHRO: And I speak the truth, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Tell me then, oh tell me--what is that fair work which the gods
do by the help of our ministrations?
EUTHYPHRO: Many and fair, Socrates, are the works which they do.
SOCRATES: Why, my friend, and so are those of a general. But the chief of
them is easily told. Would you not say that victory in war is the chief of
them?
EUTHYPHRO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Many and fair, too, are the works of the husbandman, if I am not
mistaken; but his chief work is the production of food from the earth?
EUTHYPHRO: Exactly.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: A modern surgeon would, probably, thanks to that training of which
Vesalius may be almost called the father, have had little difficulty
in finding out what was the matter with the luckless lad, and little
difficulty in removing the evil, if it had not gone too far. But
the Spanish physicians were then, as many of them are said to be
still, as far behind the world in surgery as in other things; and
indeed surgery itself was then in its infancy, because men, ever
since the early Greek schools of Alexandria had died out, had been
for centuries feeding their minds with anything rather than with
facts. Therefore the learned morosophs who were gathered round Don
Carlos's sick bed had become according to their own confession,
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