| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: and there was sitting by him on the couches near, Pausanias of the deme of
Cerameis, and with Pausanias was a youth quite young, who is certainly
remarkable for his good looks, and, if I am not mistaken, is also of a fair
and gentle nature. I thought that I heard him called Agathon, and my
suspicion is that he is the beloved of Pausanias. There was this youth,
and also there were the two Adeimantuses, one the son of Cepis, and the
other of Leucolophides, and some others. I was very anxious to hear what
Prodicus was saying, for he seems to me to be an all-wise and inspired man;
but I was not able to get into the inner circle, and his fine deep voice
made an echo in the room which rendered his words inaudible.
No sooner had we entered than there followed us Alcibiades the beautiful,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: story that she read,-- the story of a man who walked the fields
and crowded streets of Galilee eighteen hundred years ago.
Knowles, with his heated brain, fancied that the silence without
in the night grew deeper, that the slow-moving air stopped in its
course to listen. Perhaps the simple story carried a deeper
meaning to these brooding mountains and solemn sky than to the
purblind hearts within. It was a far-off story to them,--very
far off. The old school-master heard it with a lowered head,
with the proud obedience with which a cavalier would receive his
leader's orders. Was not the leader a knights the knight of
truest courage? All that was high, chivalric in the old man
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
