| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: 'beggarly elements' of scholastic logic which he has thrown down. So far
as they are aids to reflection and expression, forms of thought are useful,
but no further:--we may easily have too many of them.
And when we are asked to believe the Hegelian to be the sole or universal
logic, we naturally reply that there are other ways in which our ideas may
be connected. The triplets of Hegel, the division into being, essence, and
notion, are not the only or necessary modes in which the world of thought
can be conceived. There may be an evolution by degrees as well as by
opposites. The word 'continuity' suggests the possibility of resolving all
differences into differences of quantity. Again, the opposites themselves
may vary from the least degree of diversity up to contradictory opposition.
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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 Recruit by Honore de Balzac: the warnings of the Faculty.
Thanks to her constant care, this son had grown and developed so much,
and so gracefully, that at twenty years of age, he was thought a most
elegant cavalier at Versailles. Madame de Dey possessed a happiness
which does not always crown the efforts and struggles of a mother. Her
son adored her; their souls understood each other with fraternal
sympathy. If they had not been bound by nature's ties, they would
instinctively have felt for each other that friendship of man to man,
which is so rarely to be met in this life. Appointed sub-lieutenant of
dragoons, at the age of eighteen, the young Comte de Dey had obeyed
the point of honor of the period by following the princes of the blood
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