| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: This place was able to afford us little consolation in our uneasy
circumstances; the arrival of our company almost caused a scarcity
of provisions. The heat in the day is intolerable, and the dews in
the night so unwholesome that it is almost certain death to go out
with one's head uncovered. Nothing can be a stronger proof of the
malignant quality of the air than that the rust will immediately
corrode both the iron and brass if they are not carefully covered
with straw. We stayed, however, in this place from the latter end
of July to the beginning of September, when having provided
ourselves with other vessels, we set out for Cochim, and landed
there after a very hazardous and difficult passage, made so partly
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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 Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: sentences the cart is always put before the horse, and so needs only
to be pushed, not pulled along.
The want of a copula is another instance of the primitive character
of the tongue. It has its counterpart in our own baby-talk, where a
quality is predicated of a thing simply by placing the adjective in
apposition with the noun.
That the Japanese word which is commonly translated "is" is in no
sense a copula, but an ordinary intransitive verb, referring to a
natural state, and not to a logical condition, is evident in two
ways. In the first place, it is never used to predicate a quality
directly. A Japanese does not say, "The scenery is fine," but
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