| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Marie by H. Rider Haggard: eyes blind with tears, for this parting was bitter. When I could see
clearly again I pulled up and looked back at the camp, which was now at
some distance. It seemed a peaceful place indeed, for although the
storm of the morning was returning and a pall of dark cloud hung over
it, the sun still shone upon the white wagon caps and the people who
went to and fro among them.
Who could have thought that within a little time it would be but a field
of blood, that those wagons would be riddled with assegais, and that the
women and children who were moving there must most of them lie upon the
veld mutilated corpses dreadful to behold? Alas! the Boers, always
impatient of authority and confident that their own individual judgment
Marie |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: SOCRATES: I have told him whom I supposed to be the teachers of these
things; but I learn from you that I am utterly at fault, and I dare say
that you are right. And now I wish that you, on your part, would tell me
to whom among the Athenians he should go. Whom would you name?
ANYTUS: Why single out individuals? Any Athenian gentleman, taken at
random, if he will mind him, will do far more good to him than the
Sophists.
SOCRATES: And did those gentlemen grow of themselves; and without having
been taught by any one, were they nevertheless able to teach others that
which they had never learned themselves?
ANYTUS: I imagine that they learned of the previous generation of
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