| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Statesman by Plato: forth into downright madness.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Like enough.
STRANGER: And then, again, the soul which is over-full of modesty and has
no element of courage in many successive generations, is apt to grow too
indolent, and at last to become utterly paralyzed and useless.
YOUNG SOCRATES: That, again, is quite likely.
STRANGER: It was of these bonds I said that there would be no difficulty
in creating them, if only both classes originally held the same opinion
about the honourable and good;--indeed, in this single work, the whole
process of royal weaving is comprised--never to allow temperate natures to
be separated from the brave, but to weave them together, like the warp and
Statesman |
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 Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: "Am I, am I Gregory Nazianzen Rose?" he said.
It was also strange, he sitting there in that sloot in that up-country
plain!--strange as the fantastic, changing shapes in a summer cloud. At
last, tired out, he fell asleep, with his head against the bank. When he
woke the shadow had stretched across the sloot, and the sun was on the edge
of the plain. Now he must be up and doing. He drew from his breast pocket
a little sixpenny looking-glass, and hung it on one of the roots that stuck
out from the bank. Then he dressed himself in one of the old-fashioned
gowns and a great pinked-out collar. Then he took out a razor. Tuft by
tuft the soft brown beard fell down into the sand, and the little ants took
it to line their nests with. Then the glass showed a face surrounded by a
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