| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: single blow, if first that empire had not been utterly rotten; and
next, if he and his handful of Persians had not been tempered and
sharpened, by long hardihood, to the finest cutting edge.
Yes, there were all the materials for the catastrophe--the cannon,
the powder, the shot. But to say that the Persians must have
conquered the Medes, even if Cyrus had never lived, is to say, as
too many philosophers seem to me to say, that, given cannon, powder,
and shot, it will fire itself off some day if we only leave it alone
long enough.
It may be so. But our usual experience of Nature and Fact is, that
spontaneous combustion is a rare and exceptional phenomenon; that if
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: the style of those his books had taught him, imitating their
language as well as he could; and all the while he rode so slowly
and the sun mounted so rapidly and with such fervour that it was
enough to melt his brains if he had any. Nearly all day he travelled
without anything remarkable happening to him, at which he was in
despair, for he was anxious to encounter some one at once upon whom to
try the might of his strong arm.
Writers there are who say the first adventure he met with was that
of Puerto Lapice; others say it was that of the windmills; but what
I have ascertained on this point, and what I have found written in the
annals of La Mancha, is that he was on the road all day, and towards
Don Quixote |
