| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll: it?" And, as I folded up the letter and put it away, I inadvertently
repeated the words aloud. "Do you believe in Fate?"
The fair 'Incognita' turned her head quickly at the sudden question.
"No, I don't!" she said with a smile. "Do you?"
"I--I didn't mean to ask the question!" I stammered, a little taken
aback at having begun a conversation in so unconventional a fashion.
The lady's smile became a laugh--not a mocking laugh, but the laugh
of a happy child who is perfectly at her ease. "Didn't you?" she said.
"Then it was a case of what you Doctors call 'unconscious cerebration'?"
"I am no Doctor," I replied. "Do I look so like one? Or what makes you
think it?"
Sylvie and Bruno |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: SOCRATES: Is anything more required to prove that the soul is man?
ALCIBIADES: Certainly not; the proof is, I think, quite sufficient.
SOCRATES: And if the proof, although not perfect, be sufficient, we shall
be satisfied;--more precise proof will be supplied when we have discovered
that which we were led to omit, from a fear that the enquiry would be too
much protracted.
ALCIBIADES: What was that?
SOCRATES: What I meant, when I said that absolute existence must be first
considered; but now, instead of absolute existence, we have been
considering the nature of individual existence, and this may, perhaps, be
sufficient; for surely there is nothing which may be called more properly
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