| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: were just now speaking come to annihilation through their own corruption
attaching to them and inhering in them and so destroying them. Is not this
true?
Yes.
Consider the soul in like manner. Does the injustice or other evil which
exists in the soul waste and consume her? Do they by attaching to the soul
and inhering in her at last bring her to death, and so separate her from
the body?
Certainly not.
And yet, I said, it is unreasonable to suppose that anything can perish
from without through affection of external evil which could not be
 The Republic |
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 Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer: In the stillness, intense by sharp contrast, the sound
of bare soles pattering upon the path outside stole to me.
Two runners, I thought there were, so that four dacoits must
have been upon our trail. The room was full of pungent smoke.
I staggered to my feet as the gray figure with the revolver
turned towards me. Something familiar there was in that long,
gray garment, and now I perceived why I had thought so.
It was my gray rain-coat.
"Karamaneh," I whispered.
And Smith, with difficulty, supporting himself upright, and holding
fast to the ledge beside the door, muttered something hoarsely,
 The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu |