| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: of passion prompted the artist to acts and words which any woman not
so young as Augustine would have ascribed to madness.
At eight o'clock next morning Madame Guillaume, surprising her
daughter, found her pale, with red eyes, her hair in disorder, holding
a handkerchief soaked with tears, while she gazed at the floor strewn
with the torn fragments of a dress and the broken fragments of a large
gilt picture-frame. Augustine, almost senseless with grief, pointed to
the wreck with a gesture of deep despair.
"I don't know that the loss is very great!" cried the old mistress of
the Cat and Racket. "It was like you, no doubt; but I am told that
there is a man on the boulevard who paints lovely portraits for fifty
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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 Crowd by Gustave le Bon: individual to curb. Thus it is that crowds are so easily led
into the worst excesses.
Still this does not mean that crowds, skilfully influenced, are
not capable of heroism and devotion and of evincing the loftiest
virtues; they are even more capable of showing these qualities
than the isolated individual. We shall soon have occasion to
revert to this point when we come to study the morality of
crowds.
Given to exaggeration in its feelings, a crowd is only impressed
by excessive sentiments. An orator wishing to move a crowd must
make an abusive use of violent affirmations. To exaggerate, to
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