| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Horse's Tale by Mark Twain: their kind. His life is always being threatened, and so it has
come to be monotonous."
"Does he know they are here?"
"Oh yes, he knows it. He is always the earliest to know who comes
and who goes. But he cares nothing for them and their threats; he
only laughs when people warn him. They'll shoot him from behind a
tree the first he knows. Did Mongrel tell you their plans?"
"Yes. They have found out that he starts for Fort Clayton day
after to-morrow, with one of his scouts; so they will leave to-
morrow, letting on to go south, but they will fetch around north
all in good time."
|
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 Phaedrus by Plato: belonging to the aristocratical, as Lysias to the democratical party.
Few persons will be inclined to suppose, in the superficial manner of some
ancient critics, that a dialogue which treats of love must necessarily have
been written in youth. As little weight can be attached to the argument
that Plato must have visited Egypt before he wrote the story of Theuth and
Thamus. For there is no real proof that he ever went to Egypt; and even if
he did, he might have known or invented Egyptian traditions before he went
there. The late date of the Phaedrus will have to be established by other
arguments than these: the maturity of the thought, the perfection of the
style, the insight, the relation to the other Platonic Dialogues, seem to
contradict the notion that it could have been the work of a youth of twenty
|