| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: "Ah," said the inspired librarian, "Eloise and Abailard."
"Well--something a little nearer, perhaps," said Glennard, with
lightness. "Didn't Merimee--"
"The lady's letters, in that case, were not published."
"Of course not," said Glennard, vexed at his blunder.
"There are George Sand's letters to Flaubert."
"Ah!" Glennard hesitated. "Was she--were they--?" He chafed at
his own ignorance of the sentimental by-paths of literature.
"If you want love-letters, perhaps some of the French eighteenth
century correspondences might suit you better--Mlle. Aisse or
Madame de Sabran--"
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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 Parmenides by Plato: 'feast' of contradictions 'has been provided.'
...
The Parmenides of Plato belongs to a stage of philosophy which has passed
away. At first we read it with a purely antiquarian or historical
interest; and with difficulty throw ourselves back into a state of the
human mind in which Unity and Being occupied the attention of philosophers.
We admire the precision of the language, in which, as in some curious
puzzle, each word is exactly fitted into every other, and long trains of
argument are carried out with a sort of geometrical accuracy. We doubt
whether any abstract notion could stand the searching cross-examination of
Parmenides; and may at last perhaps arrive at the conclusion that Plato has
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