| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Son of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: suckled and raised him from infancy almost to manhood. He told
him, too, of the dangers and the horrors of the jungle; of
the great beasts that stalked one by day and by night; of the
periods of drought, and of the cataclysmic rains; of hunger; of
cold; of intense heat; of nakedness and fear and suffering.
He told him of all those things that seem most horrible to the
creature of civilization in the hope that the knowledge of them
might expunge from the lad's mind any inherent desire for the jungle.
Yet they were the very things that made the memory of the jungle
what it was to Tarzan--that made up the composite jungle life
he loved. And in the telling he forgot one thing--the principal
The Son of Tarzan |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: I think not.
Then they are not lovers of horses, whom the horses do not love in return;
nor lovers of quails, nor of dogs, nor of wine, nor of gymnastic exercises,
who have no return of love; no, nor of wisdom, unless wisdom loves them in
return. Or shall we say that they do love them, although they are not
beloved by them; and that the poet was wrong who sings--
'Happy the man to whom his children are dear, and steeds having single
hoofs, and dogs of chase, and the stranger of another land'?
I do not think that he was wrong.
You think that he is right?
Yes.
Lysis |
