| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: mistress of Pericles; and any one whose teachers had been far inferior to
his own--say, one who had learned from Antiphon the Rhamnusian--would be
quite equal to the task of praising men to themselves. When we remember
that Antiphon is described by Thucydides as the best pleader of his day,
the satire on him and on the whole tribe of rhetoricians is transparent.
The ironical assumption of Socrates, that he must be a good orator because
he had learnt of Aspasia, is not coarse, as Schleiermacher supposes, but is
rather to be regarded as fanciful. Nor can we say that the offer of
Socrates to dance naked out of love for Menexenus, is any more un-Platonic
than the threat of physical force which Phaedrus uses towards Socrates.
Nor is there any real vulgarity in the fear which Socrates expresses that
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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 The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: for you will both see me again before all is over. Those that wish
to be clean, clean they will be; and those that wish to be foul,
foul they will be. Remember."
And she turned away, and through a gate into the meadow. Grimes
stood still a moment, like a man who had been stunned. Then he
rushed after her, shouting, "You come back." But when he got into
the meadow, the woman was not there.
Had she hidden away? There was no place to hide in. But Grimes
looked about, and Tom also, for he was as puzzled as Grimes himself
at her disappearing so suddenly; but look where they would, she was
not there.
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