| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson: direct and narrow; the trees stood over it, with knotty joints and
the great, uplifted forest of their boughs; there was no sound,
whether of man or beast - not so much as the stirring of a robin;
and over the field of snow the winter sun lay golden among netted
shadows.
"How say ye," asked Dick of one of the men, "to follow straight on,
or strike across for Tunstall?"
"Sir Richard," replied the man-at-arms, "I would follow the line
until they scatter."
"Ye are, doubtless, right," returned Dick; "but we came right
hastily upon the errand, even as the time commanded. Here are no
|
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: Even in the case of absolute scoundrels it often happens that the
mere fact of their being in a crowd endows them for the moment
with very strict principles of morality. Taine calls attention
to the fact that the perpetrators of the September massacres
deposited on the table of the committees the pocket-books and
jewels they had found on their victims, and with which they could
easily have been able to make away. The howling, swarming,
ragged crowd which invaded the Tuileries during the revolution of
1848 did not lay hands on any of the objects that excited its
astonishment, and one of which would have meant bread for many
days.
|
