| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: murders sleep by bawling out the name of his beloved; there is also a
contrast between the false, exaggerated, sentimental love of Hippothales
towards Lysis, and the childlike and innocent friendship of the boys with
one another. Some difference appears to be intended between the characters
of the more talkative Menexenus and the reserved and simple Lysis.
Socrates draws out the latter by a new sort of irony, which is sometimes
adopted in talking to children, and consists in asking a leading question
which can only be answered in a sense contrary to the intention of the
question: 'Your father and mother of course allow you to drive the
chariot?' 'No they do not.' When Menexenus returns, the serious dialectic
begins. He is described as 'very pugnacious,' and we are thus prepared for
 Lysis |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin: in somewhat the same manner as various inherited consensual movements
and tastes require some exercise before they are fixed and perfected.
This is all the more likely with a habit like weeping, which must have been
acquired since the period when man branched off from the common progenitor
of the genus Homo and of the non-weeping anthropomorphous apes.
[7] Dr. Duchenne makes this remark, ibid. p. 39.
The fact of tears not being shed at a very early age from pain
or any mental emotion is remarkable, as, later in life, no expression
is more general or more strongly marked than weeping. When the habit
has once been acquired by an infant, it expresses in the clearest
manner suffering of all kinds, both bodily pain and mental distress,
 Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals |