| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: for ourselves. His truth may not be our truth, and nevertheless may have
an extraordinary value and interest for us.
I cannot agree with Mr. Grote in admitting as genuine all the writings
commonly attributed to Plato in antiquity, any more than with Schaarschmidt
and some other German critics who reject nearly half of them. The German
critics, to whom I refer, proceed chiefly on grounds of internal evidence;
they appear to me to lay too much stress on the variety of doctrine and
style, which must be equally acknowledged as a fact, even in the Dialogues
regarded by Schaarschmidt as genuine, e.g. in the Phaedrus, or Symposium,
when compared with the Laws. He who admits works so different in style and
matter to have been the composition of the same author, need have no
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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 Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: from Browndean; and begged! I would like to see you beg. It's not
so easy as you might suppose. I played it on being a shipwrecked
mariner from Blyth; I don't know where Blyth is, do you? but I
thought it sounded natural. I begged from a little beast of a
schoolboy, and he forked out a bit of twine, and asked me to make
a clove hitch; I did, too, I know I did, but he said it wasn't,
he said it was a granny's knot, and I was a what-d'ye-call-'em,
and he would give me in charge. Then I begged from a naval
officer--he never bothered me with knots, but he only gave me a
tract; there's a nice account of the British navy!--and then from
a widow woman that sold lollipops, and I got a hunch of bread
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Dreams & Dust by Don Marquis: Wars with the heart that dares and sings;--
It is not always Dawn!
A little while, with age and death,
He wanders, dreaming.
WORDS ARE NOT GUNS
Put by the sword (a dreamer saith),
The years of peace draw nigh!
Already the millennial dawn
Makes red the eastern sky!
Be not deceived. It comes not yet!
The ancient passions keep
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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 The Door in the Wall, et. al. by H. G. Wells: forgotten."
I thought. I had never noticed the point before, but he was
right.
"Never," I said. "That is what you never seem to do with
dreams."
"No," he answered. "But that is just what I did. I am a
solicitor, you must understand, in Liverpool, and I could not help
wondering what the clients and business people I found myself
talking to in my office would think if I told them suddenly I was
in love with a girl who would be born a couple of hundred years or
so hence, and worried about the politics of my great-great-great-
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