| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: the color, the very life of the line which seems to terminate the
body? The same phenomenon which we notice around fishes in the water
is also about objects which float in air. See how these outlines
spring forth from the background. Do you not feel that you could pass
your hand behind those shoulders? For seven years have I studied these
effects of light coupled with form. That hair,--is it not bathed in
light? Why, she breathes! That bosom,--see! Ah! who would not worship
it on bended knee? The flesh palpitates! Wait, she is about to rise;
wait!"
"Can you see anything?" whispered Poussin to Porbus.
"Nothing. Can you?"
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: in their desire to keep them, they abstain from some pleasures, because
they are overcome by others; and although to be conquered by pleasure is
called by men intemperance, to them the conquest of pleasure consists in
being conquered by pleasure. And that is what I mean by saying that, in a
sense, they are made temperate through intemperance.
Such appears to be the case.
Yet the exchange of one fear or pleasure or pain for another fear or
pleasure or pain, and of the greater for the less, as if they were coins,
is not the exchange of virtue. O my blessed Simmias, is there not one true
coin for which all things ought to be exchanged?--and that is wisdom; and
only in exchange for this, and in company with this, is anything truly
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