| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Blix by Frank Norris: to me. Here, we'll match for it."
Condy drew a dime from his pocket, and Blix a quarter from her
purse.
"You're matching me," she said.
Condy tossed the coin and lost, and Blix said, as he picked up the
book:
"For a man that has such unvarying bad luck as you, gambling is
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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 Charmides by Plato: somewhat faulty, he will not strive in his rendering to reproduce these
characteristics, but will re-write the passage as his author would have
written it at first, had he not been 'nodding'; and he will not hesitate to
supply anything which, owing to the genius of the language or some accident
of composition, is omitted in the Greek, but is necessary to make the
English clear and consecutive.
It is difficult to harmonize all these conflicting elements. In a
translation of Plato what may be termed the interests of the Greek and
English are often at war with one another. In framing the English sentence
we are insensibly diverted from the exact meaning of the Greek; when we
return to the Greek we are apt to cramp and overlay the English. We
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