The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Twilight Land by Howard Pyle: there not some one here to tell us a fair story about a saint?"
"For the matter of that," said the Lad who fiddled when the Jew
was in the bramble-bush--"for the matter of that I know a very
good story that begins about a saint and a hazel-nut.
"Say you so?" said St. George. "Well, let us have it. But stay,
friend, thou hast no ale in thy pot. Wilt thou not let me pay for
having it filled?"
"That," said the Lad who fiddled when the Jew was in the
bramble-bush, "may be as you please, Sir Knight; and, to tell the
truth, I will be mightily glad for a drop to moisten my throat
withal."
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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 Charmides by Plato: Their eristic, or rather Socratic character; they belong to the class
called dialogues of search (Greek), which have no conclusion. (iii) The
absence in them of certain favourite notions of Plato, such as the doctrine
of recollection and of the Platonic ideas; the questions, whether virtue
can be taught; whether the virtues are one or many. (iv) They have a want
of depth, when compared with the dialogues of the middle and later period;
and a youthful beauty and grace which is wanting in the later ones. (v)
Their resemblance to one another; in all the three boyhood has a great
part. These reasons have various degrees of weight in determining their
place in the catalogue of the Platonic writings, though they are not
conclusive. No arrangement of the Platonic dialogues can be strictly
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