| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: soul exists before birth, and in coming to life and being born can be born
only from death and dying, must she not after death continue to exist,
since she has to be born again?--Surely the proof which you desire has been
already furnished. Still I suspect that you and Simmias would be glad to
probe the argument further. Like children, you are haunted with a fear
that when the soul leaves the body, the wind may really blow her away and
scatter her; especially if a man should happen to die in a great storm and
not when the sky is calm.
Cebes answered with a smile: Then, Socrates, you must argue us out of our
fears--and yet, strictly speaking, they are not our fears, but there is a
child within us to whom death is a sort of hobgoblin; him too we must
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: learned, from his example, an utter detestation of all falsehood
or disguise; and truth appeared so amiable to me, that I
determined upon sacrificing every thing to it.
Let me deal so candidly with the reader as to confess that there
was yet a much stronger motive for the freedom I took in my
representation of things. I had not yet been a year in this
country before I contracted such a love and veneration for the
inhabitants, that I entered on a firm resolution never to return
to humankind, but to pass the rest of my life among these
admirable HOUYHNHNMS, in the contemplation and practice of every
virtue, where I could have no example or incitement to vice. But
 Gulliver's Travels |