| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: He still stared at the graves. "Those people in there didn't think all
these uncomfortable things."
"Ah! no! They belonged in the first volume of the history of our national
soul, before the bloom was off us."
"That's an odd notion! And pray what volume are we in now?"
"Only the second."
"Since when?"
"Since that momentous picnic, the Spanish War!"
"I don't see how that took the bloom off us."
"It didn't. It merely waked Europe up to the facts."
"Our battleships, you mean?"
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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 Protagoras by Plato: first-rate Sophist. Your own Agathocles pretended to be a musician, but
was really an eminent Sophist; also Pythocleides the Cean; and there were
many others; and all of them, as I was saying, adopted these arts as veils
or disguises because they were afraid of the odium which they would incur.
But that is not my way, for I do not believe that they effected their
purpose, which was to deceive the government, who were not blinded by them;
and as to the people, they have no understanding, and only repeat what
their rulers are pleased to tell them. Now to run away, and to be caught
in running away, is the very height of folly, and also greatly increases
the exasperation of mankind; for they regard him who runs away as a rogue,
in addition to any other objections which they have to him; and therefore I
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