| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: later writers. Some of these are not much worse than the conjectures of
Hemsterhuis, and other critics of the last century; but this does not prove
that they are serious. For Plato is in advance of his age in his
conception of language, as much as he is in his conception of mythology.
(Compare Phaedrus.)
When the fervour of his etymological enthusiasm has abated, Socrates ends,
as he has begun, with a rational explanation of language. Still he
preserves his 'know nothing' disguise, and himself declares his first
notions about names to be reckless and ridiculous. Having explained
compound words by resolving them into their original elements, he now
proceeds to analyse simple words into the letters of which they are
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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 Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: train, however out of the way, gets its news simultaneously
with Moscow, many days sometimes before the belated Izvestia
or Pravda finds its way to them. And with its latest
news it gets its latest propaganda, and in order to get the
one it cannot help getting the other. Next door to that there
is a kinematograph wagon, with benches to seat about one
hundred and fifty persons. But indoor performances are
only given to children, who must come during the daytime,
or in summer when the evenings are too light to permit an
open air performance. In the ordinary way, at night, a great
screen is fixed up in the open. There is a special hole cut in
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