| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: them shorthanded and without local knowledge
of the river bed, which is so necessary for the con-
fident handling of the ship. There were no pilots,
no beacons, no buoys of any sort; but there was a
very devil of a current for anybody to see, no end
of shoal places, and at least two obviously awkward
turns of the channel between me and the sea. But
how dangerous these turns were I would not tell. I
didn't even know what my ship was capable of!
I had never handled her in my life. A misunder-
standing between a man and his ship in a difficult
Falk |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: Clouds. He is the most wonderful of human beings, and absolutely unlike
anyone but a satyr. Like the satyr in his language too; for he uses the
commonest words as the outward mask of the divinest truths.
When Alcibiades has done speaking, a dispute begins between him and Agathon
and Socrates. Socrates piques Alcibiades by a pretended affection for
Agathon. Presently a band of revellers appears, who introduce disorder
into the feast; the sober part of the company, Eryximachus, Phaedrus, and
others, withdraw; and Aristodemus, the follower of Socrates, sleeps during
the whole of a long winter's night. When he wakes at cockcrow the
revellers are nearly all asleep. Only Socrates, Aristophanes, and Agathon
hold out; they are drinking from a large goblet, which they pass round, and
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