| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Memorabilia by Xenophon: that as long as they were companions of Socrates even they were
temperate, not assuredly from fear of being fined or beaten by
Socrates, but because they were persuaded for the nonce of the
excellence of such conduct.
[6] {sophrosune} = "sound-mindedness," "temperence." See below, IV.
iii. 1.
Perhaps some self-styled philosophers[7] may here answer: "Nay, the
man truly just can never become unjust, the temperate man can never
become intemperate, the man who has learnt any subject of knowledge
can never be as though he had learnt it not." That, however, is not my
own conclusion. It is with the workings of the soul as with those of
The Memorabilia |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: Inn, to the tiny one-room cabin of Oscar, the handy man
about the Inn, and there she listened to one of Oscar's far-
famed phonograph concerts. Oscar's phonograph had cost
twenty-five dollars in Denver. It stood in one corner of
his cabin, and its base was a tree stump just five hundred
years old, as you could tell for yourself by counting its
rings. His cabin walls were gorgeous with pictures of
Maxine Elliott in her palmy days, and blonde and
sophisticated little girls on vinegar calendars, posing
bare-legged and self-conscious in blue calico and
sunbonnets. You sat in the warm yellow glow of Oscar's lamp
Fanny Herself |
