| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Economist by Xenophon: Soc. And suppose in connection with the same, I next point out to
you[3] two other sets of persons:--The first possessors of furniture
of various kinds, which they cannot, however, lay their hands on when
the need arises; indeed they hardly know if they have got all safe and
sound or not: whereby they put themselves and their domestics to much
mental torture. The others are perhaps less amply, or at any rate not
more amply supplied, but they have everything ready at the instant for
immediate use.
[3] "As in a mirror, or a picture."
Crit. Yes, Socrates, and is not the reason simply that in the first
case everything is thrown down where it chanced, whereas those others
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: herself and makes a few honest folk now and again, and now and then a
cashier.
Wherefore, that race of corsairs whom we dignify with the title of
bankers, the gentry who take out a license for which they pay a
thousand crowns, as the privateer takes out his letters of marque,
hold these rare products of the incubations of virtue in such esteem
that they confine them in cages in their counting-houses, much as
governments procure and maintain specimens of strange beasts at their
own charges.
If the cashier is possessed of an imagination or of a fervid
temperament; if, as will sometimes happen to the most complete
|