| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche: Fretted conceit and suppressed envy--perhaps your fathers' conceit and
envy: in you break they forth as flame and frenzy of vengeance.
What the father hath hid cometh out in the son; and oft have I found in the
son the father's revealed secret.
Inspired ones they resemble: but it is not the heart that inspireth them--
but vengeance. And when they become subtle and cold, it is not spirit, but
envy, that maketh them so.
Their jealousy leadeth them also into thinkers' paths; and this is the sign
of their jealousy--they always go too far: so that their fatigue hath at
last to go to sleep on the snow.
In all their lamentations soundeth vengeance, in all their eulogies is
Thus Spake Zarathustra |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: --That is cutting the knot, said my father, instead of untying it,--But
give me leave to lead you, brother Toby, a little deeper into the mystery.
With all my heart, replied my uncle Toby.
My father instantly exchanged the attitude he was in, for that in which
Socrates is so finely painted by Raffael in his school of Athens; which
your connoisseurship knows is so exquisitely imagined, that even the
particular manner of the reasoning of Socrates is expressed by it--for he
holds the fore-finger of his left-hand between the fore-finger and the
thumb of his right, and seems as if he was saying to the libertine he is
reclaiming--'You grant me this--and this: and this, and this, I don't ask
of you--they follow of themselves in course.'
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