| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: admissible logical term, as proved by the phrase "reductio ad
absurdum;" the rest badgering him as a conversational bully.
Mighty little we troubled ourselves for PADUS, the Po, "a river
broader and more rapid than the Rhone," and the times when Hannibal
led his grim Africans to its banks, and his elephants thrust their
trunks into the yellow waters over which that pendulum ferry-boat
was swinging back and forward every ten minutes!
- Here are some of those reminiscences, with morals prefixed, or
annexed, or implied.
Lively emotions very commonly do not strike us full in front, but
obliquely from the side; a scene or incident in UNDRESS often
 The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: And do the Scythians and others see that which has the quality of vision,
or that which has not? said Euthydemus.
That which has the quality of vision clearly.
And you also see that which has the quality of vision? he said. (Note:
the ambiguity of (Greek), 'things visible and able to see,' (Greek), 'the
speaking of the silent,' the silent denoting either the speaker or the
subject of the speech, cannot be perfectly rendered in English. Compare
Aristot. Soph. Elenchi (Poste's translation):--
'Of ambiguous propositions the following are instances:--
'I hope that you the enemy may slay.
'Whom one knows, he knows. Either the person knowing or the person known
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