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: be expected to be found in works of the same author, and not in those of an
imitator, being too subtle and minute to have been invented by another.
The similar passages and turns of thought are generally inferior to the
parallel passages in his earlier writings; and we might a priori have
expected that, if altered, they would have been improved. But the
comparison of the Laws proves that this repetition of his own thoughts and
words in an inferior form is characteristic of Plato's later style.
3. The close connexion of them with the Theaetetus, Parmenides, and
Philebus, involves the fate of these dialogues, as well as of the two
suspected ones.
4. The suspicion of them seems mainly to rest on a presumption that in
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 Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: The characters along the base were equally baffling; and no member
present, despite a representation of half the world's expert learning
in this field, could form the least notion of even their remotest
linguistic kinship. They, like the subject and material, belonged
to something horribly remote and distinct from mankind as we know
it. something frightfully suggestive of old and unhallowed cycles
of life in which our world and our conceptions have no part.
And
yet, as the members severally shook their heads and confessed
defeat at the Inspector's problem, there was one man in that gathering
who suspected a touch of bizarre familiarity in the monstrous
Call of Cthulhu |