| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: the Aristotelian point of view. Of these eccentric thinkers there have
been various types, but they have all a family likeness. According to
them, there has been too much analysis and too little synthesis, too much
division of the mind into parts and too little conception of it as a whole
or in its relation to God and the laws of the universe. They have thought
that the elements of plurality and unity have not been duly adjusted. The
tendency of such writers has been to allow the personality of man to be
absorbed in the universal, or in the divine nature, and to deny the
distinction between matter and mind, or to substitute one for the other.
They have broken some of the idols of Psychology: they have challenged the
received meaning of words: they have regarded the mind under many points
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: for the children of professed beggars: it is of a much greater
extent, and shall take in the whole number of infants at a
certain age, who are born of parents in effect as little able to
support them, as those who demand our charity in the streets.
As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years, upon
this important subject, and maturely weighed the several schemes
of our projectors, I have always found them grossly mistaken in
their computation. It is true, a child just dropt from its dam,
may be supported by her milk, for a solar year, with little other
nourishment: at most not above the value of two shillings, which
the mother may certainly get, or the value in scraps, by her
 A Modest Proposal |