| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson: a warran-dice against all deadly."
"To which you might add (if you will take my word for so much) that I
am a good churchman, loyal to King George, and so brought up," I went
on.
"None of which will do you any harm," said Mr. Balfour.
"Then you might go on to say that I sought his lordship on a matter of
great moment, connected with His Majesty's service and the
administration of justice," I suggested.
"As I am not to hear the matter," says the laird, "I will not take upon
myself to qualify its weight. 'Great moment' therefore falls, and
'moment' along with it. For the rest I might express myself much as
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: Few persons will be inclined to suppose, in the superficial manner of some
ancient critics, that a dialogue which treats of love must necessarily have
been written in youth. As little weight can be attached to the argument
that Plato must have visited Egypt before he wrote the story of Theuth and
Thamus. For there is no real proof that he ever went to Egypt; and even if
he did, he might have known or invented Egyptian traditions before he went
there. The late date of the Phaedrus will have to be established by other
arguments than these: the maturity of the thought, the perfection of the
style, the insight, the relation to the other Platonic Dialogues, seem to
contradict the notion that it could have been the work of a youth of twenty
or twenty-three years of age. The cosmological notion of the mind as the
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