| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: Yes.
Then in virtue of the affection by which the one is other than the others,
every thing will be like every thing, for every thing is other than every
thing.
True.
Again, the like is opposed to the unlike?
Yes.
And the other to the same?
True again.
And the one was also shown to be the same with the others?
Yes.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: "About a year after the purchase of the practice, I was dragged into a
bachelor breakfast-party given by one of our number who had lost a bet
to a young man greatly in vogue in the fashionable world. M. de
Trailles, the flower of the dandyism of that day, enjoyed a prodigious
reputation."
"But he is still enjoying it," put in the Comte de Born. "No one wears
his clothes with a finer air, nor drives a tandem with a better grace.
It is Maxime's gift; he can gamble, eat, and drink more gracefully
than any man in the world. He is a judge of horses, hats, and
pictures. All the women lose their heads over him. He always spends
something like a hundred thousand francs a year, and no creature can
Gobseck |
