| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Apology by Xenophon: [51] "Why precisely now?"
Now there was a certain Apollodorus,[52] who was an enthusiastic lover
of the master, but for the rest a simple-minded man. He exclaimed very
innocently, "But the hardest thing of all to bear, Socrates, is to see
you put to death unjustly."[53]
[52] Cf. "Mem." III. xi. 17; Plut. "Cato min." 46 (Clough, iv. 417).
See Cobet, "Pros. Xen." s.n.; cf. Plat. "Symp." 173; "Phaed." 54
A, 117 D; Aelian, "V. H." i. 16; Heges. "Delph." ap. Athen. xi.
507.
[53] Diog. Laert. ii. 5. 35, ascribes the remark to Xanthippe, and so
Val. Max. 7. 2, Ext. 1.
 The Apology |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: to them the sentiments of knights-errant. Then came the
revolutionary criticism of the eighteenth century, which assumed
that everything old was wrong, while everything new was right. It
recognized crudely the differences between one age and another,
but it had a way of looking down upon all ages except the
present. This intolerance shown toward the past was indeed a
measure of the crudeness with which it was comprehended. Because
Mohammed, if he had done what he did, in France and in the
eighteenth century, would have been called an impostor, Voltaire,
the great mouthpiece and representative of this style of
criticism, portrays him as an impostor. Recognition of the fact
 The Unseen World and Other Essays |