| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas: of either Epicurus or Socrates, he was a powerful spirit,
having knowledge of life, and endowed with thought. No one
is as brave, as adventurous, or as skillful as D'Artagnan,
without being at the same time inclined to be a dreamer. He
had picked up, here and there, some scraps of M. de la
Rochefoucauld, worthy of being translated into Latin by MM.
de Port Royal, and he had made a collection, en passant, in
the society of Athos and Aramis, of many morsels of Seneca
and Cicero, translated by them, and applied to the uses of
common life. That contempt of riches which our Gascon had
observed as an article of faith during the thirty-five first
Ten Years Later |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: bringing himself to a respectful seriousness, and to a certain
timid deference in presence of religions; but even when his
sentiments have reached the stage of gratitude towards them, he
has not personally advanced one step nearer to that which still
maintains itself as Church or as piety; perhaps even the
contrary. The practical indifference to religious matters in the
midst of which he has been born and brought up, usually
sublimates itself in his case into circumspection and
cleanliness, which shuns contact with religious men and things;
and it may be just the depth of his tolerance and humanity which
prompts him to avoid the delicate trouble which tolerance itself
Beyond Good and Evil |
