| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Economist by Xenophon: direct experiment, and that too without cost at all or even serious
trouble.[39] Nor need you now distress yourself, my wife, to think how
hard it will be to discover some one who has wit enough to learn the
places for the several things and memory to take and place them there.
We know, I fancy, that the goods of various sorts contained in the
whole city far outnumber ours many thousand times; and yet you have
only to bid any one of your domestics go buy this, or that, and bring
it you from market, and not one of them will hesitate. The whole world
knows both where to go and where to find each thing.
[39] Lit. "now whether these things I say are true (i.e. are facts),
we can make experiment of the things themselves (i.e. of actual
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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 Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: very slight ones?
CRITIAS: Certainly I consider that those who have such wants are bad, and
that the greater their wants the worse they are.
SOCRATES: And do we think it possible that a thing should be useful for a
purpose unless we have need of it for that purpose?
CRITIAS: No.
SOCRATES: Then if these things are useful for supplying the needs of the
body, we must want them for that purpose?
CRITIAS: That is my opinion.
SOCRATES: And he to whom the greatest number of things are useful for his
purpose, will also want the greatest number of means of accomplishing it,
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