| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Adventure by Jack London: three times."
The house-boy extended the whip to him, but Billy did not take it.
Sheldon waited quietly. The eyes of all the cannibals were fixed
upon him in doubt and fear and eagerness. It was the moment of
test, whereby the lone white man was to live or be lost.
"Ten fella three times, Billy," Sheldon said encouragingly, though
there was a certain metallic rasp in his voice.
Billy scowled, looked up and looked down, but did not move.
"Billy!"
Sheldon's voice exploded like a pistol shot. The savage started
physically. Grins overspread the grotesque features of the
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: were to frame a system on his lines we should be at war with ordinary
language and untrue to our own consciousness. And there have been a few
both in mediaeval times and since the Reformation who have rebelled against
the Aristotelian point of view. Of these eccentric thinkers there have
been various types, but they have all a family likeness. According to
them, there has been too much analysis and too little synthesis, too much
division of the mind into parts and too little conception of it as a whole
or in its relation to God and the laws of the universe. They have thought
that the elements of plurality and unity have not been duly adjusted. The
tendency of such writers has been to allow the personality of man to be
absorbed in the universal, or in the divine nature, and to deny the
|
