| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Misalliance by George Bernard Shaw: take yourself out of my house and say it elsewhere.
THE MAN. What sort of a joker are you? Are you trying to put me in
the wrong, when you have to answer to me for a crime that would make
every honest man spit at you as you passed in the street if I were to
make it known?
TARLETON. You read a good deal, dont you?
THE MAN. What if I do? What has that to do with your infamy and my
mother's doom?
TARLETON. There, you see! Doom! Thats not good sense; but it's
literature. Now it happens that I'm a tremendous reader: always was.
When I was your age I read books of that sort by the bushel: the Doom
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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 Phaedo by Plato: to know through life; or, after birth, those who are said to learn only
remember, and learning is simply recollection.
Yes, that is quite true, Socrates.
And which alternative, Simmias, do you prefer? Had we the knowledge at our
birth, or did we recollect the things which we knew previously to our
birth?
I cannot decide at the moment.
At any rate you can decide whether he who has knowledge will or will not be
able to render an account of his knowledge? What do you say?
Certainly, he will.
But do you think that every man is able to give an account of these very
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