| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: "Well, old lad, it does look very natural to see you. I often used
to think of you walking the deck o' nights. Uncle and the girls
are all right, then? But is the old pony dead yet? And how's Dick
the smith, and Nancy? Grown a fine maid by now, I warrant. 'Slid,
it seems half a life that I've been away.
"And you really thought of your poor cousin? Be sure that he, too,
thought of you, and offered up nightly his weak prayers for your
safety (doubtless, not without avail) to those saints, to whom
would that you--"
"Halt there, coz. If they are half as good fellows as you and I
take them for, they'll help me without asking."
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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 Phaedrus by Plato: confused by rhetoricians with the preliminaries of the art. The perfection
of oratory is like the perfection of anything else; natural power must be
aided by art. But the art is not that which is taught in the schools of
rhetoric; it is nearer akin to philosophy. Pericles, for instance, who was
the most accomplished of all speakers, derived his eloquence not from
rhetoric but from the philosophy of nature which he learnt of Anaxagoras.
True rhetoric is like medicine, and the rhetorician has to consider the
natures of men's souls as the physician considers the natures of their
bodies. Such and such persons are to be affected in this way, such and
such others in that; and he must know the times and the seasons for saying
this or that. This is not an easy task, and this, if there be such an art,
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