| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Herodias by Gustave Flaubert: "It is I!" thought the tetrarch.
It might be that the Arabs would return and make a successful attack
upon him. Perhaps the proconsul would discover his relations with the
Parthians. Several men whom Antipas had recognised as hired assassins
from Jerusalem, had escorted the priests in the train of the
proconsul; they all carried daggers concealed beneath their robes. The
tetrarch had no doubt whatever of the exactness of Phanuel's skill in
astrology.
Suddenly he bethought him of Herodias. He would consult her. He hated
her, certainly, but she might give him courage; and besides, in spite
of his dislike, not all the bonds were yet broken of that sorcery
Herodias |
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 Gorgias by Plato: race. It is a similar picture of suffering goodness which Plato desires to
pourtray, not without an allusion to the fate of his master Socrates. He
is convinced that, somehow or other, such an one must be happy in life or
after death. In the Republic, he endeavours to show that his happiness
would be assured here in a well-ordered state. But in the actual condition
of human things the wise and good are weak and miserable; such an one is
like a man fallen among wild beasts, exposed to every sort of wrong and
obloquy.
Plato, like other philosophers, is thus led on to the conclusion, that if
'the ways of God' to man are to be 'justified,' the hopes of another life
must be included. If the question could have been put to him, whether a
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