| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather: were there. In a way, he really is there.
She never lets him go. It's the most beautiful
and dignified sorrow I've ever known. It's so
beautiful that it has its compensations,
I should think. Its very completeness
is a compensation. It gives her a fixed star
to steer by. She doesn't drift. We sat there
evening after evening in the quiet of that
magically haunted room, and watched the
sunset burn on the river, and felt him.
Felt him with a difference, of course."
Alexander's Bridge |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: not the same as the false?
HIPPIAS: Of course, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And is that your own opinion, Hippias?
HIPPIAS: Certainly; how can I have any other?
SOCRATES: Well, then, as there is no possibility of asking Homer what he
meant in these verses of his, let us leave him; but as you show a
willingness to take up his cause, and your opinion agrees with what you
declare to be his, will you answer on behalf of yourself and him?
HIPPIAS: I will; ask shortly anything which you like.
SOCRATES: Do you say that the false, like the sick, have no power to do
things, or that they have the power to do things?
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