| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: this idea. There is no friendship so noble, but it is the
product of the time; and a world of little finical
observances, and little frail proprieties and fashions of the
hour, go to make or to mar, to stint or to perfect, the union
of spirits the most loving and the most intolerant of such
interference. The trick of the country and the age steps in
even between the mother and her child, counts out their
caresses upon niggardly fingers, and says, in the voice of
authority, that this one thing shall be a matter of
confidence between them, and this other thing shall not. And
thus it is that we must take into reckoning whatever tended
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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 Symposium by Xenophon: state does not lay burthens on you and treat you like a slave; and
secondly, people do not fall into a rage with you when you refuse to
be their creditor.
You may stay your envy (interposed Niceratus), I shall presently
present myself to borrow of him this same key of his to
independence.[69] Trained as I am to cast up figures by my master
Homer--
Seven tripods, which ne'er felt the fire, and of gold ten talents
And burnished braziers twenty, and horses twelve--[70]
by weight and measure duly reckoned,[71] I cannot stay my craving for
enormous wealth. And that's the reason certain people, I daresay,
The Symposium |
