| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: Quite impossible.
And now, he said, you may add on whatever you like, for you confess that
you know all things.
I suppose that is true, I said, if my qualification implied in the words
'that I know' is not allowed to stand; and so I do know all things.
And have you not admitted that you always know all things with that which
you know, whether you make the addition of 'when you know them' or not? for
you have acknowledged that you have always and at once known all things,
that is to say, when you were a child, and at your birth, and when you were
growing up, and before you were born, and before the heaven and earth
existed, you knew all things, if you always know them; and I swear that you
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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 Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: ambition was to make her salon a centre towards which a given number
of persons should nightly make their way with pleasure. One morning as
she left Saint-Gatien, after Birotteau and his friend Mademoiselle
Salomon had spent a few evenings with her and with the faithful and
patient Troubert, she said to certain of her good friends whom she met
at the church door, and whose slave she had hitherto considered
herself, that those who wished to see her could certainly come once a
week to her house, where she had friends enough to make a card-table;
she could not leave the Abbe Birotteau; Mademoiselle Salomon had not
missed a single evening that week; she was devoted to friends; and--et
cetera, et cetera. Her speech was all the more humbly haughty and
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