| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Market-Place by Harold Frederic: historical, bookish! His mind had begun to throw open again,
to abstract thoughts and musings, its long-closed doors.
He had read and dreamed so much as a lad, in the old
book-shop! For many years that boyhood of eager concern
in the printed page had seemed to him to belong to
somebody else. Now, all at once, it came back to him as his
own possession; he felt that he could take up books again
where he had dropped them, perhaps even with the old rapt,
intent zest.
Visions rose before him of the magnificent library he
would gather for himself. And it should be in no wise
 The Market-Place |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: Quite true, Socrates.
But if the knowledge which we acquired before birth was lost by us at
birth, and if afterwards by the use of the senses we recovered what we
previously knew, will not the process which we call learning be a
recovering of the knowledge which is natural to us, and may not this be
rightly termed recollection?
Very true.
So much is clear--that when we perceive something, either by the help of
sight, or hearing, or some other sense, from that perception we are able to
obtain a notion of some other thing like or unlike which is associated with
it but has been forgotten. Whence, as I was saying, one of two
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