| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: ways of gilding the distasteful orthodox bolus. Some swallow
it in a thin jelly of metaphysics; for it is even a credit to
believe in God on the evidence of some crack-jaw philosopher,
although it is a decided slur to believe in Him on His own
authority. Others again (and this we think the worst
method), finding German grammar a somewhat dry morsel, run
their own little heresy as a proof of independence; and deny
one of the cardinal doctrines that they may hold the others
without being laughed at.
Besides, however, such influences as these, there is little
more distinction between the faculties than the traditionary
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: the most pressing questions of the day. Of the two great problems
that stare the Western world in the face at the present moment, both
turn to it for solution. Agnosticism, the foreboding silence of
those who think, socialism, communism, and nihilism, the petulant
cry of those who do not, alike depend ultimately for the right to be
upon the truth or the falsity of the sense of self.
For if there be no such actual thing as individuality, if the
feeling we call by that name be naught but the transient illusion
the Buddhists would have us believe it, any faith founded upon it as
basis vanishes as does the picture in a revolving kaleidoscope,--
less enduring even than the flitting phantasmagoria of a dream.
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