| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: and count it the most arduous form of idleness.
More swing doors open into pigeon-holes where judges
of the First Appeal sit singly, and halls of audience
where the supreme Lords sit by three or four. Here, you
may see Scott's place within the bar, where he wrote many
a page of Waverley novels to the drone of judicial
proceeding. You will hear a good deal of shrewdness,
and, as their Lordships do not altogether disdain
pleasantry, a fair proportion of dry fun. The broadest
of broad Scotch is now banished from the bench; but the
courts still retain a certain national flavour. We have
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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 Laches by Plato: often be more courageous than the intelligent, the bad than the good. How
is this contradiction to be solved? Socrates and Laches are not set 'to
the Dorian mode' of words and actions; for their words are all confusion,
although their actions are courageous. Still they must 'endure' in an
argument about endurance. Laches is very willing, and is quite sure that
he knows what courage is, if he could only tell.
Nicias is now appealed to; and in reply he offers a definition which he has
heard from Socrates himself, to the effect that (1) 'Courage is
intelligence.' Laches derides this; and Socrates enquires, 'What sort of
intelligence?' to which Nicias replies, 'Intelligence of things terrible.'
'But every man knows the things to be dreaded in his own art.' 'No they do
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