| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Statesman by Plato: converted into a beneficent king. The sophist too is no longer, as in the
earlier dialogues, the rival of the statesman, but assumes his form. Plato
sees that the ideal of the state in his own day is more and more severed
from the actual. From such ideals as he had once formed, he turns away to
contemplate the decline of the Greek cities which were far worse now in his
old age than they had been in his youth, and were to become worse and worse
in the ages which followed. He cannot contain his disgust at the
contemporary statesmen, sophists who had turned politicians, in various
forms of men and animals, appearing, some like lions and centaurs, others
like satyrs and monkeys. In this new disguise the Sophists make their last
appearance on the scene: in the Laws Plato appears to have forgotten them,
Statesman |
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 A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: brought with him, into the circle of the enlightened and tolerant
Paris clergy, the bitter provincial catholicism and the inflexible
bigotry which fetter timid souls with endless exactions, Madame de
Granville did penance and returned from her Jansenist errors.
It would be tiresome to describe minutely all the circumstances which
insensibly brought disaster on this household; it will be enough to
relate the simple facts without giving them in strict order of time.
The first misunderstanding between the young couple was, however, a
serious one.
When Granville took his wife into society she never declined solemn
functions, such as dinners, concerts, or parties given by the Judges
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