| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: making a step by the aid of Platonic reminiscence, and a further step by
the help of the nous of Anaxagoras; until at last we rest in the conviction
that the soul is inseparable from the ideas, and belongs to the world of
the invisible and unknown. Then, as in the Gorgias or Republic, the
curtain falls, and the veil of mythology descends upon the argument. After
the confession of Socrates that he is an interested party, and the
acknowledgment that no man of sense will think the details of his narrative
true, but that something of the kind is true, we return from speculation to
practice. He is himself more confident of immortality than he is of his
own arguments; and the confidence which he expresses is less strong than
that which his cheerfulness and composure in death inspire in us.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: complex expression [Greek text which cannot be reproduced].
Otherwise, the whole account in the REPUBLIC of primitive man will
always remain as a warning against the intrusion of A PRIORI
speculations in the domain appropriate to induction.
Now, Aristotle's theory of the origin of society, like his
philosophy of ethics, rests ultimately on the principle of final
causes, not in the theological meaning of an aim or tendency
imposed from without, but in the scientific sense of function
corresponding to organ. 'Nature maketh no thing in vain' is the
text of Aristotle in this as in other inquiries. Man being the
only animal possessed of the power of rational speech is, he
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