The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The People That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: the modern and extinct herbivore of the world. A huge woolly
mastodon stood swaying to and fro in the shade of a giant
fern--a mighty bull with enormous upcurving tusks. Near him
grazed an aurochs bull with a cow and a calf, close beside a
lone rhinoceros asleep in a dust-hole. Deer, antelope, bison,
horses, sheep, and goats were all in sight at the same time,
and at a little distance a great megatherium reared up on its
huge tail and massive hind feet to tear the leaves from a
tall tree. The forgotten past rubbed flanks with the present--
while Tom Billings, modern of the moderns, passed in the garb of
pre-Glacial man, and before him trotted a creature of a breed
 The People That Time Forgot |
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 Laches by Plato: of fighting; but the heavy-armed Greek fights, as I say, remaining in his
rank.
SOCRATES: And yet, Laches, you must except the Lacedaemonians at Plataea,
who, when they came upon the light shields of the Persians, are said not to
have been willing to stand and fight, and to have fled; but when the ranks
of the Persians were broken, they turned upon them like cavalry, and won
the battle of Plataea.
LACHES: That is true.
SOCRATES: That was my meaning when I said that I was to blame in having
put my question badly, and that this was the reason of your answering
badly. For I meant to ask you not only about the courage of heavy-armed
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