| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: the Messenian territory, or in the number of their slaves, and especially
of the Helots, or of their horses, or of the animals which feed on the
Messenian pastures. But I have said enough of this: and as to gold and
silver, there is more of them in Lacedaemon than in all the rest of Hellas,
for during many generations gold has been always flowing in to them from
the whole Hellenic world, and often from the barbarian also, and never
going out, as in the fable of Aesop the fox said to the lion, 'The prints
of the feet of those going in are distinct enough;' but who ever saw the
trace of money going out of Lacedaemon? And therefore you may safely infer
that the inhabitants are the richest of the Hellenes in gold and silver,
and that their kings are the richest of them, for they have a larger share
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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 Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: ceased; and concerning superstitious ceremonies it is vain to
conjecture; for what reason did not dictate, reason cannot explain.
I have long believed that the practice of embalming arose only from
tenderness to the remains of relations or friends; and to this
opinion I am more inclined because it seems impossible that this
care should have been general; had all the dead been embalmed,
their repositories must in time have been more spacious than the
dwellings of the living. I suppose only the rich or honourable
were secured from corruption, and the rest left to the course of
nature.
"But it is commonly supposed that the Egyptians believed the soul
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