| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin: hard and gave him very little money. So, after a month or two,
Gluck grew tired and made up his mind to go and try his fortune with
the Golden River. "The little king looked very kind," thought he.
"I don't think he will turn me into a black stone." So he went to
the priest, and the priest gave him some holy water as soon as he
asked for it. Then Gluck took some bread in his basket, and the
bottle of water, and set off very early for the mountains.
If the glacier had occasioned a great deal of fatigue in his
brothers, it was twenty times worse for him, who was neither so
strong nor so practiced on the mountains. He had several very bad
falls, lost his basket and bread, and was very much frightened at
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: dialectic; Hippias, who has previously exhibited his superficial knowledge
of natural philosophy, to which, as in both the Dialogues called by his
name, he now adds the profession of an interpreter of the Poets. The two
latter personages have been already damaged by the mock heroic description
of them in the introduction. It may be remarked that Protagoras is
consistently presented to us throughout as the teacher of moral and
political virtue; there is no allusion to the theories of sensation which
are attributed to him in the Theaetetus and elsewhere, or to his denial of
the existence of the gods in a well-known fragment ascribed to him; he is
the religious rather than the irreligious teacher in this Dialogue. Also
it may be observed that Socrates shows him as much respect as is consistent
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