| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: shop-keepers, who, if a resolution could now be taken to buy only
our native goods, would immediately unite to cheat and exact upon
us in the price, the measure, and the goodness, nor could ever
yet be brought to make one fair proposal of just dealing, though
often and earnestly invited to it.
Therefore I repeat, let no man talk to me of these and the like
expedients, 'till he hath at least some glympse of hope, that
there will ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them
into practice.
But, as to my self, having been wearied out for many years with
offering vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length utterly
A Modest Proposal |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: to say to a child "Stop that noise." But suppose the child asks why!
There are various answers in use. The simplest: "Because it
irritates me," may fail; for it may strike the child as being rather
amusing to irritate you; also the child, having comparatively no
nerves, may be unable to conceive your meaning vividly enough. In any
case it may want to make a noise more than to spare your feelings.
You may therefore have to explain that the effect of the irritation
will be that you will do something unpleasant if the noise continues.
The something unpleasant may be only a look of suffering to rouse the
child's affectionate sympathy (if it has any), or it may run to
forcible expulsion from the room with plenty of unnecessary violence;
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