| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: And the art of the rhapsode is different from that of the
charioteer?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: And if a different knowledge, then a knowledge of different
matters?
ION: True.
SOCRATES: You know the passage in which Hecamede, the concubine of Nestor,
is described as giving to the wounded Machaon a posset, as he says,
'Made with Pramnian wine; and she grated cheese of goat's milk with a
grater of bronze, and at his side placed an onion which gives a relish to
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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 Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: in riddles after the fashion of his tribe. For all poetry has by nature an
enigmatical character, and it is by no means everybody who can interpret
it. And if, moreover, the spirit of poetry happen to seize on a man who is
of a begrudging temper and does not care to manifest his wisdom but keeps
it to himself as far as he can, it does indeed require an almost superhuman
wisdom to discover what the poet would be at. You surely do not suppose
that Homer, the wisest and most divine of poets, was unaware of the
impossibility of knowing a thing badly: for it was no less a person than
he who said of Margites that 'he knew many things, but knew them all
badly.' The solution of the riddle is this, I imagine:--By 'badly' Homer
meant 'bad' and 'knew' stands for 'to know.' Put the words together;--the
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