| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: With the Baconian it is different. If you place before him the
above figures and set him to adding them up, he will never in any
case get more than 45 out of them, and in nine cases out of ten
he will get just the proper 31.
Let me try to illustrate the two systems in a simple and
homely way calculated to bring the idea within the grasp of the
ignorant and unintelligent. We will suppose a case: take a lap-
bred, house-fed, uneducated, inexperienced kitten; take a rugged
old Tom that's scarred from stem to rudder-post with the
memorials of strenuous experience, and is so cultured, so
educated, so limitlessly erudite that one may say of him "all
 What is Man? |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: least it was useful that the common people should so believe. There
was good hope that the simple masses, seeing the old dignities and
formalities still parading the streets, should suppose that they
still contained men, and were not mere wooden figures, dressed
artistically in official costume. And, on the whole, that hope was
not deceived. More than a century of bitter experience was needed
ere the masses discovered that their ancient rulers were like the
suits of armour in the Tower of London--empty iron astride of wooden
steeds, and armed with lances which every ploughboy could wrest out
of their hands, and use in his own behalf.
The mistake of the masses was pardonable. For those suits of armour
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