| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin: for they are performed if a finger moistened with milk is placed
in the mouth of a puppy, the front part of whose brain has been
removed.[17] It has recently been stated in France, that the action
of sucking is excited solely through the sense of smell, so that
if the olfactory nerves of a puppy are destroyed, it never sucks.
In like manner the wonderful power which a chicken possesses only a few
hours after being hatched, of picking up small particles of food,
seems to be started into action through the sense of hearing;
for with chickens hatched by artificial heat, a good observer found
that "making a noise with the finger-nail against a board, in imitation
of the hen-mother, first taught them to peck at their meat."[18]
Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: which it has in Homer.) to make such a request; a man must be very careful
lest he pray for evil under the idea that he is asking for good, when
shortly after he may have to recall his prayer, and, as you were saying,
demand the opposite of what he at first requested.
SOCRATES: And was not the poet whose words I originally quoted wiser than
we are, when he bade us (pray God) to defend us from evil even though we
asked for it?
ALCIBIADES: I believe that you are right.
SOCRATES: The Lacedaemonians, too, whether from admiration of the poet or
because they have discovered the idea for themselves, are wont to offer the
prayer alike in public and private, that the Gods will give unto them the
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