| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: philosophy advanced for the Lacedaemonians, which is a parody of the claims
advanced for the Poets by Protagoras; the mistake of the Laconizing set in
supposing that the Lacedaemonians are a great nation because they bruise
their ears; the far-fetched notion, which is 'really too bad,' that
Simonides uses the Lesbian (?) word, (Greek), because he is addressing a
Lesbian. The whole may also be considered as a satire on those who spin
pompous theories out of nothing. As in the arguments of the Euthydemus and
of the Cratylus, the veil of irony is never withdrawn; and we are left in
doubt at last how far in this interpretation of Simonides Socrates is
'fooling,' how far he is in earnest.
All the interests and contrasts of character in a great dramatic work like
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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 Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: roses surmounted her brow, and the whole was crowned by a village hat of
chipped straw. Amongst all the rosy and all the weathered faces that
surrounded her in church, she glowed like an open flower - girl and
raiment, and the cairngorm that caught the daylight and returned it in a
fiery flash, and the threads of bronze and gold that played in her hair.
Archie was attracted by the bright thing like a child. He looked at her
again and yet again, and their looks crossed. The lip was lifted from
her little teeth. He saw the red blood work vividly under her tawny
skin. Her eye, which was great as a stag's, struck and held his gaze.
He knew who she must be - Kirstie, she of the harsh diminutive, his
housekeeper's niece, the sister of the rustic prophet, Gib - and he
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