| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: penniless Miguel. It is a sort of local currency by courtesy.
Credit in these parts has passed into a superstition. I have seen
a strong, violent man struggling for months to recover a debt, and
getting nothing but an exchange of waste paper. The very
storekeepers are averse to asking for cash payments, and are more
surprised than pleased when they are offered. They fear there must
be something under it, and that you mean to withdraw your custom
from them. I have seen the enterprising chemist and stationer
begging me with fervour to let my account run on, although I had my
purse open in my hand; and partly from the commonness of the case,
partly from some remains of that generous old Mexican tradition
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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 Lesser Hippias by Plato: truly, speaks always with a purpose.
SOCRATES: Then Odysseus would appear after all to be better than Achilles?
HIPPIAS: Certainly not, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Why, were not the voluntary liars only just now shown to be
better than the involuntary?
HIPPIAS: And how, Socrates, can those who intentionally err, and
voluntarily and designedly commit iniquities, be better than those who err
and do wrong involuntarily? Surely there is a great excuse to be made for
a man telling a falsehood, or doing an injury or any sort of harm to
another in ignorance. And the laws are obviously far more severe on those
who lie or do evil, voluntarily, than on those who do evil involuntarily.
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