| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: Tezcat, you have dwelt with us but a little while, and now you will
not suffer that we hold you longer from your glory, for your eyes
have longed to see this happy day, and it is come at last. We have
loved you, Tezcat, and ministered to you, grant in return that we
may see you in your splendour, we who are your little children, and
till we come, watch well over our earthly welfare, and that of the
people among whom you have deigned to sojourn.'
Having spoken some such words as these, that at times could
scarcely be heard because of the sobbing of the people, and of my
wives who wept loudly, except Otomie alone, this villainous priest
made a sign and once more the music sounded. Then he and his band
 Montezuma's Daughter |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: according to them. He is to partake of the repose of nature and of the
order of nature, to bring the variable principle in himself into harmony
with the principle of the same. The ethics of the Timaeus may be summed up
in the single idea of 'law.' To feel habitually that he is part of the
order of the universe, is one of the highest ethical motives of which man
is capable. Something like this is what Plato means when he speaks of the
soul 'moving about the same in unchanging thought of the same.' He does
not explain how man is acted upon by the lesser influences of custom or of
opinion; or how the commands of the soul watching in the citadel are
conveyed to the bodily organs. But this perhaps, to use once more
expressions of his own, 'is part of another subject' or 'may be more
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