| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: advantage of our actual ignorance? What we call knowledge is
often our positive ignorance; ignorance our negative knowledge.
By long years of patient industry and reading of the
newspapers--for what are the libraries of science but files of
newspapers--a man accumulates a myriad facts, lays them up in his
memory, and then when in some spring of his life he saunters
abroad into the Great Fields of thought, he, as it were, goes to
grass like a horse and leaves all his harness behind in the
stable. I would say to the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge, sometimes,--Go to grass. You have eaten hay long
enough. The spring has come with its green crop. The very cows
Walking |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: his cup of coffee, without immediate notice of the guest whom he
had summoned to his presence. It was not that he intended any
rudeness or improper neglect,--which, indeed, he would have
blushed to be guilty of,--but it never occurred to him that a
person in Maule's station had a claim on his courtesy, or would
trouble himself about it one way or the other.
The carpenter, however, stepped at once to the hearth, and turned
himself about, so as to look Mr. Pyncheon in the face.
"You sent for me," said he. "Be pleased to explain your business,
that I may go back to my own affairs."
"Ah! excuse me," said Mr. Pyncheon quietly. "I did not mean to
House of Seven Gables |
