| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: Troy had been bright with fame and not with fire.'
Here feelingly she weeps Troy's painted woes:
For sorrow, like a heavy-hanging bell,
Once set on ringing, with his own weight goes;
Then little strength rings out the doleful knell:
So Lucrece set a-work sad tales doth tell
To pencill'd pensiveness and colour'd sorrow;
She lends them words, and she their looks doth borrow.
She throws her eyes about the painting round,
And whom she finds forlorn she doth lament:
At last she sees a wretched image bound,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: will be the listener.
To this proposal Protagoras replied: As you please;--and Hippias,
Prodicus, and the others told me by all means to do as I proposed.
Then now, I said, I will endeavour to explain to you my opinion about this
poem of Simonides. There is a very ancient philosophy which is more
cultivated in Crete and Lacedaemon than in any other part of Hellas, and
there are more philosophers in those countries than anywhere else in the
world. This, however, is a secret which the Lacedaemonians deny; and they
pretend to be ignorant, just because they do not wish to have it thought
that they rule the world by wisdom, like the Sophists of whom Protagoras
was speaking, and not by valour of arms; considering that if the reason of
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