| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: requires a wife to follow dutifully in the wake of her husband,
whenever the two go out together, there is small opportunity for
intercourse by the way, even were there the slightest inclination to
it, which there is not. The appearance of the pair on an excursion
is a walking satire on sociability, for the comicality of the
connection is quite unperceived by the performers. In the privacy
of the domestic circle the separation, if less humorous, is no less
complete. Each lives in a world of his own, largely separate in
fact in China and Korea, and none the less in fancy in Japan.
On the continent a friend of the husband would see little or nothing
of the wife, and even in Japan he would meet her much as we meet an
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tao Teh King by Lao-tze: The meshes of the net of Heaven are large; far apart, but letting
nothing escape.
74. 1. The people do not fear death; to what purpose is it to (try to)
frighten them with death? If the people were always in awe of death,
and I could always seize those who do wrong, and put them to death,
who would dare to do wrong?
2. There is always One who presides over the infliction death. He who
would inflict death in the room of him who so presides over it may be
described as hewing wood instead of a great carpenter. Seldom is it
that he who undertakes the hewing, instead of the great carpenter,
does not cut his own hands!
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