| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: portion than a large. There would be the same difficulty in moving any of
the upper elements towards the lower. The smooth and the rough are
severally produced by the union of evenness with compactness, and of
hardness with inequality.
Pleasure and pain are the most important of the affections common to the
whole body. According to our general doctrine of sensation, parts of the
body which are easily moved readily transmit the motion to the mind; but
parts which are not easily moved have no effect upon the patient. The
bones and hair are of the latter kind, sight and hearing of the former.
Ordinary affections are neither pleasant nor painful. The impressions of
sight afford an example of these, and are neither violent nor sudden. But
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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 Rewards and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling: which I'd found. "Here's your true enemy, revealed at last
by the stars."
'"Nay, but I'm praying," says Jack. His face was as white as
washed silver.
'"There's a time for everything under the sun," says I. "If you
would stay the plague, take and kill your rats."
'"Oh, mad, stark mad!" says he, and wrings his hands.
'A fellow lay in the ditch beside him, who bellows that he'd as
soon die mad hunting rats as be preached to death on a cold
fallow. They laughed round him at this, but Jack Marget falls on
his knees, and very presumptuously petitions that he may be
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