| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Riverman by Stewart Edward White: Orde selected a twig and carefully threw it at a lump in the turf.
"Because there's nothing ahead of shovelling but dirt," he replied
with a quaint grin.
"I see," said Newmark, after a pause. "Then you think there's more
future to that sort of thing than the sort of thing the rest of your
friends go in for--law, and wholesale groceries, and banking and the
rest of it?"
"There is for me," replied Orde simply.
"Yet you're merely river-driving on a salary at thirty."
Orde flushed slowly, and shifted his position.
"Exactly so--Mr. District Attorney," he said drily.
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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 Cratylus by Plato: separates the warp from the woof, so a name distinguishes the natures of
things. The weaver will use the shuttle well,--that is, like a weaver; and
the teacher will use the name well,--that is, like a teacher. The shuttle
will be made by the carpenter; the awl by the smith or skilled person. But
who makes a name? Does not the law give names, and does not the teacher
receive them from the legislator? He is the skilled person who makes them,
and of all skilled workmen he is the rarest. But how does the carpenter
make or repair the shuttle, and to what will he look? Will he not look at
the ideal which he has in his mind? And as the different kinds of work
differ, so ought the instruments which make them to differ. The several
kinds of shuttles ought to answer in material and form to the several kinds
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