| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: why? Because the whole city is in a league which protects the individual.
Suppose however that one of these owners and his household is carried off
by a god into a wilderness, where there are no freemen to help him--will he
not be in an agony of terror?--will he not be compelled to flatter his
slaves and to promise them many things sore against his will? And suppose
the same god who carried him off were to surround him with neighbours who
declare that no man ought to have slaves, and that the owners of them
should be punished with death. 'Still worse and worse! He will be in the
midst of his enemies.' And is not our tyrant such a captive soul, who is
tormented by a swarm of passions which he cannot indulge; living indoors
always like a woman, and jealous of those who can go out and see the world?
 The Republic |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: "With pleasure," he said. "Go straight before you, along the path you
are now on, and I will follow you when I have put away my tackle."
We nodded consent, and he ran off joyfully toward the town. This
meeting maintained us in our previous mental condition; but it
lessened our gay lightheartedness.
"Poor man!" said Pauline, with that accent which removes from the
compassion of a woman all that is mortifying in human pity, "ought we
not to feel ashamed of our happiness in presence of such misery?"
"Nothing is so cruelly painful as to have powerless desires," I
answered. "Those two poor creatures, the father and son, will never
know how keen our sympathy for them is, any more than the world will
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