| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: the intelligence is wanting, and when the intelligence is able to frame
conceptions, the organs are no longer able to express them. Or, as others
have said: Man is man because he has the gift of speech; and he could not
have invented that which he is. But this would have been an 'argument too
subtle' for Socrates, who rejects the theological account of the origin of
language 'as an excuse for not giving a reason,' which he compares to the
introduction of the 'Deus ex machina' by the tragic poets when they have to
solve a difficulty; thus anticipating many modern controversies in which
the primary agency of the divine Being is confused with the secondary
cause; and God is assumed to have worked a miracle in order to fill up a
lacuna in human knowledge. (Compare Timaeus.)
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: and life, a moment before, had been like their plot of ground,
shut off, hedged in from importunities, impenetrably his and hers.
Now it seemed to him that every maple-leaf, every privet-bud, was
a relentless human gaze, pressing close upon their privacy. It
was as though they sat in a brightly lit room, uncurtained from a
darkness full of hostile watchers. . . . His wife still smiled;
and her unconsciousness of danger seemed, in some horrible way, to
put her beyond the reach of rescue. . . .
He had not known that it would be like this. After the first
odious weeks, spent in preparing the letters for publication, in
submitting them to Flamel, and in negotiating with the publishers,
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