| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: And let Phaedrus answer you.
PHAEDRUS: Put the question.
SOCRATES: Is not rhetoric, taken generally, a universal art of enchanting
the mind by arguments; which is practised not only in courts and public
assemblies, but in private houses also, having to do with all matters,
great as well as small, good and bad alike, and is in all equally right,
and equally to be esteemed--that is what you have heard?
PHAEDRUS: Nay, not exactly that; I should say rather that I have heard the
art confined to speaking and writing in lawsuits, and to speaking in public
assemblies--not extended farther.
SOCRATES: Then I suppose that you have only heard of the rhetoric of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: one side you see several rooms filled with paintings as before, all
so curious, and the variety such, that it is with reluctance that
you can turn from them; while looking another way you are called
off by a vast collection of busts and pieces of the greatest
antiquity of the kind, both Greek and Romans; among these there is
one of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius in basso-relievo. I never
saw anything like what appears here, except in the chamber of
rarities at Munich in Bavaria.
Passing these, you come into several large rooms, as if contrived
for the reception of the beautiful guests that take them up; one of
these is near seventy feet long, and the ceiling twenty-six feet
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