| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Economist by Xenophon: [6] Lit. "quite adequately."
Soc. Obviously, a thing so plain appeals to the eye at once.
Isch. Can you by eyesight recognise the difference between a dry soil
and a moist?
Soc. I should certainly select as dry the soil round Lycabettus,[7]
and any that resembles it; and as moist, the soil in the marsh meadows
of Phalerum,[8] or the like.
[7] See Leake, "Topog. of Athens," i. 209.
[8] Or, "the Phaleric marsh-land." See Leake, ib. 231, 427; ii. 9.
Isch. In planting, would you dig (what I may call) deep trenches in a
dry soil or a moist?
|
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 Walking by Henry David Thoreau: with that occupied by the bulk of our States, so fertile and so
rich and varied in its productions, and at the same time so
habitable by the European, as this is? Michaux, who knew but part
of them, says that "the species of large trees are much more
numerous in North America than in Europe; in the United States
there are more than one hundred and forty species that exceed
thirty feet in height; in France there are but thirty that attain
this size." Later botanists more than confirm his observations.
Humboldt came to America to realize his youthful dreams of a
tropical vegetation, and he beheld it in its greatest perfection
in the primitive forests of the Amazon, the most gigantic
Walking |
