| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: sticking pins in their ears while they slept. The generation
who follow us are very precocious."
"Come, Beauchamp," said Chateau-Renaud, "I will bet anything
you do not believe a word of all you have been telling us."
"I do not see the Count of Monte Cristo here."
"He is worn out," said Debray; "besides, he could not well
appear in public, since he has been the dupe of the
Cavalcanti, who, it appears, presented themselves to him
with false letters of credit, and cheated him out of 100,000
francs upon the hypothesis of this principality."
"By the way, M. de Chateau-Renaud," asked Beauchamp, "how is
The Count of Monte Cristo |
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 Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: strength of their own: when they find themselves at variance with
the greater number of their fellow-countrymen, they withdraw to
their own circle, where they support and console themselves.
Such is not the case in a democratic country; there public favor
seems as necessary as the air we breathe, and to live at variance
with the multitude is, as it were, not to live. The multitude
requires no laws to coerce those who think not like itself:
public disapprobation is enough; a sense of their loneliness and
impotence overtakes them and drives them to despair.
Whenever social conditions are equal, public opinion presses
with enormous weight upon the mind of each individual; it
|
