| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: association of dissimilar things possessing a merely apparent
connection between each other, and the immediate generalisation
of particular cases. It is arguments of this kind that are
always presented to crowds by those who know how to manage them.
They are the only arguments by which crowds are to be influenced.
A chain of logical argumentation is totally incomprehensible to
crowds, and for this reason it is permissible to say that they do
not reason or that they reason falsely and are not to be
influenced by reasoning. Astonishment is felt at times on
reading certain speeches at their weakness, and yet they had an
enormous influence on the crowds which listened to them, but it
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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 Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: short muffled taps, a pause, and then again, stealthily repeated.
The sound of Mr. Winters' breathing was comforting; with the
thought that there was help within call, something kept me from
waking him. I did not move for a moment; ridiculous things Liddy
had said about a ghost--I am not at all superstitious, except,
perhaps, in the middle of the night, with everything dark--things
like that came back to me. Almost beside me was the clothes
chute. I could feel it, but I could see nothing. As I stood,
listening intently, I heard a sound near me. It was vague,
indefinite. Then it ceased; there was an uneasy movement and a
grunt from the foot of the circular staircase, and silence again.
The Circular Staircase |
