| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: operation. For as the physician considers that the body will receive no
benefit from taking food until the internal obstacles have been removed, so
the purifier of the soul is conscious that his patient will receive no
benefit from the application of knowledge until he is refuted, and from
refutation learns modesty; he must be purged of his prejudices first and
made to think that he knows only what he knows, and no more.
THEAETETUS: That is certainly the best and wisest state of mind.
STRANGER: For all these reasons, Theaetetus, we must admit that refutation
is the greatest and chiefest of purifications, and he who has not been
refuted, though he be the Great King himself, is in an awful state of
impurity; he is uninstructed and deformed in those things in which he who
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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 Love and Friendship by Jane Austen: humble Cottage for the Deceitfull Pleasures of the World.
Adeiu
Laura.
LETTER 5th
LAURA to MARIANNE
One Evening in December as my Father, my Mother and myself, were
arranged in social converse round our Fireside, we were on a
sudden greatly astonished, by hearing a violent knocking on the
outward door of our rustic Cot.
My Father started--"What noise is that," (said he.) "It sounds
like a loud rapping at the door"--(replied my Mother.) "it does
Love and Friendship |
