| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: It was reserved for his successors to convert Kant's notion of
Bewusstsein uberhaupt, or abstract consciousness, into an
infinite concrete self-consciousness which is the soul of the
world, and in which our sundry personal self-consciousnesses
have their being. It would lead me into technicalities to show
you even briefly how this transformation was in point of fact
effected. Suffice it to say that in the Hegelian school, which
to-day so deeply influences both British and American thinking,
two principles have borne the brunt of the operation.
The first of these principles is that the old logic of identity
never gives us more than a post-mortem dissection of disjecta
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: forward, impudent, and ignorant young men, and I have quite made
up my mind to put an end to the whole business.'.
'O skittles!' said the graceful John.
But Morris was not so easy in his mind. This unusual act of
insubordination had already troubled him; and these mutinous
words now sounded ominously in his ears. He looked at the old
gentleman uneasily. Upon one occasion, many years before, when
Joseph was delivering a lecture, the audience had revolted in a
body; finding their entertainer somewhat dry, they had taken the
question of amusement into their own hands; and the lecturer
(along with the board schoolmaster, the Baptist clergyman, and a
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