| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Pericles by William Shakespeare: The sea-tost Pericles appears to speak.
[Exit.]
SCENE I.
[Enter Pericles, on shipboard.]
PERICLES.
Thou god of this great vast, rebuke these surges,
Which wash forth both heaven and hell; and thou that hast
Upon the winds command, bind them in brass,
Having call'd them from the deep! O, still
Thy deafening, dreadful thunders; gently quench
Thy nimble, sulphurous flashes! O, how, Lychorida,
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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 Sophist by Plato: whole schools of philosophy passed away in the vain attempt to solve the
problem of the continuity or divisibility of matter. And in comparatively
modern times, though in the spirit of an ancient philosopher, Bishop
Berkeley, feeling a similar perplexity, is inclined to deny the truth of
infinitesimals in mathematics. Many difficulties arise in practical
religion from the impossibility of conceiving body and mind at once and in
adjusting their movements to one another. There is a border ground between
them which seems to belong to both; and there is as much difficulty in
conceiving the body without the soul as the soul without the body. To the
'either' and 'or' philosophy ('Everything is either A or not A') should at
least be added the clause 'or neither,' 'or both.' The double form makes
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