| 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: youth, and especially the famous conversation which Socrates had with him
when he was quite young, a few days before his own trial and death, as we
are once more reminded at the end of the dialogue. Yet we may observe that
Plato has himself forgotten this, when he represents Euclides as from time
to time coming to Athens and correcting the copy from Socrates' own mouth.
The narrative, having introduced Theaetetus, and having guaranteed the
authenticity of the dialogue (compare Symposium, Phaedo, Parmenides), is
then dropped. No further use is made of the device. As Plato himself
remarks, who in this as in some other minute points is imitated by Cicero
(De Amicitia), the interlocutory words are omitted.
Theaetetus, the hero of the battle of Corinth and of the dialogue, is a
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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 People That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Du-seen forth without her? There was a puzzler, and once again
I was all at sea.
On the second day of my experience of the Galu country I came
upon a bunch of as magnificent horses as it has ever been my
lot to see. They were dark bays with blazed faces and perfect
surcingles of white about their barrels. Their forelegs were
white to the knees. In height they stood almost sixteen hands,
the mares being a trifle smaller than the stallions, of which
there were three or four in this band of a hundred, which
comprised many colts and half-grown horses. Their markings
were almost identical, indicating a purity of strain that might
 The People That Time Forgot |