| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: can only be expressed by the word genteel. Her face,
encompassed by the blackness of the receding heath,
showed whitely, and with-out half-lights, like a cameo.
She was a woman of middle-age, with well-formed features
of the type usually found where perspicacity is the chief
quality enthroned within. At moments she seemed to be
regarding issues from a Nebo denied to others around.
She had something of an estranged mien; the solitude
exhaled from the heath was concentrated in this face that
had risen from it. The air with which she looked at the
heathmen betokened a certain unconcern at their presence,
Return of the Native |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: people, who recognize in their assemblies the distinction between the
skilled and the unskilled in the arts, do not distinguish between the
trained politician and the untrained; (2) Because the wisest and best
Athenian citizens do not teach their sons political virtue. Will
Protagoras answer these objections?
Protagoras explains his views in the form of an apologue, in which, after
Prometheus had given men the arts, Zeus is represented as sending Hermes to
them, bearing with him Justice and Reverence. These are not, like the
arts, to be imparted to a few only, but all men are to be partakers of
them. Therefore the Athenian people are right in distinguishing between
the skilled and unskilled in the arts, and not between skilled and
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