| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: pervading a whole work, but one, two, or more, as the invention of the
writer may suggest, or his fancy wander. If each dialogue were confined to
the development of a single idea, this would appear on the face of the
dialogue, nor could any controversy be raised as to whether the Phaedrus
treated of love or rhetoric. But the truth is that Plato subjects himself
to no rule of this sort. Like every great artist he gives unity of form to
the different and apparently distracting topics which he brings together.
He works freely and is not to be supposed to have arranged every part of
the dialogue before he begins to write. He fastens or weaves together the
frame of his discourse loosely and imperfectly, and which is the warp and
which is the woof cannot always be determined.
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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 The Cavalry General by Xenophon: characteristic of knightly pageantry[9] will have been displayed to
the delight of god and man. That our knights are not accustomed to
these actual evolutions, I am well aware; but I also recognise the
fact that the performances are good and beautiful and will give
pleasure to spectators. I do not fail to note, moreover, that novel
feats of horsemanship have before now been performed by our knights,
when their commanders have had the ability to get their wishes readily
complied with.
[9] Lit. "everything that may be performed on a mounted horse."
Possibly, as Cobet suggests, {kala} has dropped out. See
"Horsemanship," xi. 3, 6.
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