| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: when the works of sculptors in general were produced, was at a loss and
went to sleep and had nothing to say?
ION: No indeed; no more than the other.
SOCRATES: And if I am not mistaken, you never met with any one among
flute-players or harp-players or singers to the harp or rhapsodes who was
able to discourse of Olympus or Thamyras or Orpheus, or Phemius the
rhapsode of Ithaca, but was at a loss when he came to speak of Ion of
Ephesus, and had no notion of his merits or defects?
ION: I cannot deny what you say, Socrates. Nevertheless I am conscious in
my own self, and the world agrees with me in thinking that I do speak
better and have more to say about Homer than any other man. But I do not
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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 Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: very person for what the legitimist sympathizers had very much at
heart just then: to organize a supply by sea of arms and
ammunition to the Carlist detachments in the South. It was
precisely to confer on that matter with Dona Rita that Captain
Blunt had been despatched from Headquarters.
Mills got in touch with Blunt at once and put the suggestion before
him. The Captain thought this the very thing. As a matter of
fact, on that evening of Carnival, those two, Mills and Blunt, had
been actually looking everywhere for our man. They had decided
that he should be drawn into the affair if it could be done. Blunt
naturally wanted to see him first. He must have estimated him a
 The Arrow of Gold |