| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: And the proof of his sanity was continued when he took up
the whispering again.
"It would never do for me to come to life again."
It was something that a ghost might have said. But what he was alluding
to was his old captain's reluctant admission of the theory of suicide.
It would obviously serve his turn--if I had understood at all the view
which seemed to govern the unalterable purpose of his action.
"You must maroon me as soon as ever you can get amongst these islands
off the Cambodge shore," he went on.
"Maroon you! We are not living in a boy's adventure tale," I protested.
His scornful whispering took me up.
The Secret Sharer |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: on Plato which cannot wholly be cleared up, and is not much illustrated by
the doubtful tradition of his retirement to Megara after the death of
Socrates. For Megara was within a walk of Athens (Phaedr.), and Plato
might have learned the Megarian doctrines without settling there.
We may begin by remarking that the theses of Parmenides are expressly said
to follow the method of Zeno, and that the complex dilemma, though declared
to be capable of universal application, is applied in this instance to
Zeno's familiar question of the 'one and many.' Here, then, is a double
indication of the connexion of the Parmenides with the Eristic school. The
old Eleatics had asserted the existence of Being, which they at first
regarded as finite, then as infinite, then as neither finite nor infinite,
|
