| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Crito by Plato: do evil, or return evil for evil, or betray the right. Are these
principles to be altered because the circumstances of Socrates are altered?
Crito admits that they remain the same. Then is his escape consistent with
the maintenance of them? To this Crito is unable or unwilling to reply.
Socrates proceeds:--Suppose the Laws of Athens to come and remonstrate with
him: they will ask 'Why does he seek to overturn them?' and if he replies,
'they have injured him,' will not the Laws answer, 'Yes, but was that the
agreement? Has he any objection to make to them which would justify him in
overturning them? Was he not brought into the world and educated by their
help, and are they not his parents? He might have left Athens and gone
where he pleased, but he has lived there for seventy years more constantly
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: or as a downright gift. In reprisals, as it were, of her youth the old
actress was pillaged; so discreetly pillaged, however, that those who
throve upon her kept their depredations within certain limits lest
even her eyes might be opened and she should sell Les Aigues and
return to Paris.
This system of "pickings" was, alas! the cause of Paul-Louis Carter's
assassination; he committed the mistake of advertising the sale of his
estate and allowing it to be known that he should take away his wife,
on whom a number of the Tonsards of Lorraine were battening. Fearing
to lose Madame des Aigues, the marauders on the estate forbore to cut
the young trees, unless pushed to extremities by finding no branches
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