| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: My father would give the word of command, "Line out!" and
point out the direction in which we were to go, and we spread out
over the stubble fields and meadows, whistling and winding about
along the lee side of the steep balks,¹ beating all the
bushes with our hunting-crops, and gazing keenly at every spot or
mark on the earth.
Something white would appear ahead. We stared hard at it,
gathered up the reins, examined the leash, scarcely believing the
good luck of having come on a hare at last. Then riding up
closer and closer, with our eyes on the white thing, it would
turn out to be not a hare at all, but a horse's skull. How
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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 Republic by Plato: separates the just from the unjust in regard to pleasure and pain!
Yet a true calculation, I said, and a number which nearly concerns human
life, if human beings are concerned with days and nights and months and
years. (729 NEARLY equals the number of days and nights in the year.)
Yes, he said, human life is certainly concerned with them.
Then if the good and just man be thus superior in pleasure to the evil and
unjust, his superiority will be infinitely greater in propriety of life and
in beauty and virtue?
Immeasurably greater.
Well, I said, and now having arrived at this stage of the argument, we may
revert to the words which brought us hither: Was not some one saying that
 The Republic |