| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson: John of the Claymore, who was warned that I might come; the third
day, to be set across one loch at Corran and another at
Balachulish, and then ask my way to the house of James of the
Glens, at Aucharn in Duror of Appin. There was a good deal of
ferrying, as you hear; the sea in all this part running deep into
the mountains and winding about their roots. It makes the
country strong to hold and difficult to travel, but full of
prodigious wild and dreadful prospects.
I had some other advice from Neil: to speak with no one by the
way, to avoid Whigs, Campbells, and the "red-soldiers;" to leave
the road and lie in a bush if I saw any of the latter coming,
Kidnapped |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: possibly have been.
It is not, then, the facts in themselves that strike the popular
imagination, but the way in which they take place and are brought
under notice. It is necessary that by their condensation, if I
may thus express myself, they should produce a startling image
which fills and besets the mind. To know the art of impressing
the imagination of crowds is to know at the same time the art of
governing them.
CHAPTER IV
A RELIGIOUS SHAPE ASSUMED BY ALL THE CONVICTIONS OF CROWDS
What is meant by the religious sentiment--It is independent of
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: it dives, it lusts and devours, it pursues and eats itself in order
to live still more eagerly and hastily; it is every living thing, of
it are our passions and desires and fears. And it is aware of
itself not as a whole, but dispersedly as individual self-
consciousness, starting out dispersedly from every one of the
sentient creatures it has called into being. They look out for
their little moments, red-eyed and fierce, full of greed, full of
the passions of acquisition and assimilation and reproduction,
submitting only to brief fellowships of defence or aggression. They
are beings of strain and conflict and competition. They are living
substance still mingled painfully with the dust. The forms in which
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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 Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: indistinct as the conscience of a man in a dream. It contracted,
creating Desire and Cloud, and from Desire and Cloud there issued
primitive Matter. This was a water, muddy, black, icy and deep. It
contained senseless monsters, incoherent portions of the forms to be
born, which are painted on the walls of the sanctuaries.
"Then Matter condensed. It became an egg. It burst. One half formed
the earth and the other the firmament. Sun, moon, winds and clouds
appeared, and at the crash of the thunder intelligent creatures awoke.
Then Eschmoun spread himself in the starry sphere; Khamon beamed in
the sun; Melkarth thrust him with his arms behind Gades; the Kabiri
descended beneath the volcanoes, and Rabetna like a nurse bent over
Salammbo |
