| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: in a state of discord, and then harmony is made last of all, and perishes
first. And how can such a notion of the soul as this agree with the other?
Not at all, replied Simmias.
And yet, he said, there surely ought to be harmony in a discourse of which
harmony is the theme.
There ought, replied Simmias.
But there is no harmony, he said, in the two propositions that knowledge is
recollection, and that the soul is a harmony. Which of them will you
retain?
I think, he replied, that I have a much stronger faith, Socrates, in the
first of the two, which has been fully demonstrated to me, than in the
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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 A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: and when he was down they beat him some more. That's Germans for you.
Only they've been getting worse while the rest of the world's been
getting better. Get your facts straight, man."
A number of us were now listening to this, and I envied the historian his
ingenious promptness--I have none--and I hoped for more of this timely
debate. But debate was over. The anti-Englishman faded to silence. Either
he was out of facts to get straight, or lacked what is so pithily termed
"come-back." The latter, I incline to think; for come-back needs no
facts, it is a self-feeder, and its entire absence in the anti-Englishman
looks as if he had been a German. Germans do not come back when it goes
against them, they bleat "Kamerad!"--or disappear. Perhaps this man was a
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