| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: remember.
PHAEDRUS: Yes, indeed; that you did, and no mistake.
SOCRATES: Then I perceive that the Nymphs of Achelous and Pan the son of
Hermes, who inspired me, were far better rhetoricians than Lysias the son
of Cephalus. Alas! how inferior to them he is! But perhaps I am mistaken;
and Lysias at the commencement of his lover's speech did insist on our
supposing love to be something or other which he fancied him to be, and
according to this model he fashioned and framed the remainder of his
discourse. Suppose we read his beginning over again:
PHAEDRUS: If you please; but you will not find what you want.
SOCRATES: Read, that I may have his exact words.
|
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 Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: exact space wherein gradually to lay her spiral thread. Moreover,
she must not leave any gaps through which her prey might find an
outlet.
An expert in these matters, the Spider soon knows the corners that
have to be filled up. With an alternating movement, first in this
direction, then in that, she lays, upon the support of the radii, a
thread that forms two acute angles at the lateral boundaries of the
faulty part and describes a zigzag line not wholly unlike the
ornament known as the fret.
The sharp corners have now been filled with frets on every side;
the time has come to work at the essential part, the snaring-web
 The Life of the Spider |