| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: have no part in the one?
True.
Then they have no number, if they have no one in them?
Of course not.
Then the others are neither one nor two, nor are they called by the name of
any number?
No.
One, then, alone is one, and two do not exist?
Clearly not.
And if there are not two, there is no contact?
There is not.
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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 Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: a time. This is the cause of the transient ascendency of a child over
its parents, which ceases as soon as it is satisfied; in the man who
is still one with nature, this contrast is constant. Cousin Betty, a
savage of Lorraine, somewhat treacherous too, was of this class of
natures, which are commoner among the lower orders than is supposed,
accounting for the conduct of the populace during revolutions.
At the time when this /Drama/ opens, if Cousin Betty would have
allowed herself to be dressed like other people; if, like the women of
Paris, she had been accustomed to wear each fashion in its turn, she
would have been presentable and acceptable, but she preserved the
stiffness of a stick. Now a woman devoid of all the graces, in Paris
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