| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: Chiefly in this--that the modern term 'experience,' while implying a point
of departure in sense and a return to sense, also includes all the
processes of reasoning and imagination which have intervened. The
necessary connexion between them by no means affords a measure of the
relative degree of importance which is to be ascribed to either element.
For the inductive portion of any science may be small, as in mathematics or
ethics, compared with that which the mind has attained by reasoning and
reflection on a very few facts.
II. The saying that 'All knowledge is sensation' is identified by Plato
with the Protagorean thesis that 'Man is the measure of all things.' The
interpretation which Protagoras himself is supposed to give of these latter
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Extracts From Adam's Diary by Mark Twain: is a thing which no other bear can do. This imitation of speech,
taken together with general absence of fur and entire absence of
tail, sufficiently indicates that this is a new kind of bear. The
further study of it will be exceedingly interesting. Meantime I
will go off on a far expedition among the forests of the North and
make an exhaustive search. There must certainly be another one
somewhere, and this one will be less dangerous when it has company
of its own species. I will go straightway; but I will muzzle this
one first.
Three Months Later
It has been a weary, weary hunt, yet I have had no success. In
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