| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: ALCIBIADES: And was there not a time when I did so think?
SOCRATES: Very good; and can you tell me how long it is since you thought
that you did not know the nature of the just and the unjust? What do you
say to a year ago? Were you then in a state of conscious ignorance and
enquiry? Or did you think that you knew? And please to answer truly, that
our discussion may not be in vain.
ALCIBIADES: Well, I thought that I knew.
SOCRATES: And two years ago, and three years ago, and four years ago, you
knew all the same?
ALCIBIADES: I did.
SOCRATES: And more than four years ago you were a child--were you not?
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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 Critias by Plato: fruits of the earth in ships, cutting transverse passages from one canal
into another, and to the city. Twice in the year they gathered the fruits
of the earth--in winter having the benefit of the rains of heaven, and in
summer the water which the land supplied by introducing streams from the
canals.
As to the population, each of the lots in the plain had to find a leader
for the men who were fit for military service, and the size of a lot was a
square of ten stadia each way, and the total number of all the lots was
sixty thousand. And of the inhabitants of the mountains and of the rest of
the country there was also a vast multitude, which was distributed among
the lots and had leaders assigned to them according to their districts and
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