| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: preoccupation was to strike it. He bore it in mind in his
victories, in his harangues, in his speeches, in all his acts.
On his deathbed it was still in his thoughts.
How is the imagination of crowds to be impressed? We shall soon
see. Let us confine ourselves for the moment to saying that the
feat is never to be achieved by attempting to work upon the
intelligence or reasoning faculty, that is to say, by way of
demonstration. It was not by means of cunning rhetoric that
Antony succeeded in making the populace rise against the
murderers of Caesar; it was by reading his will to the multitude
and pointing to his corpse.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: of them, a thing which God cannot endure, since He has promised
His grace freely, and wills that we begin by trusting that grace,
and in it perform all works, whatever they may be.
XII. Note for yourself, then, how far apart these two are:
keeping the First Commandment with outward works only, and
keeping it with inward trust. For this last makes true, living
children of God, the other only makes worse idolatry and the most
mischievous hypocrites on earth, who with their apparent
righteousness lead unnumbered people into their way, and yet
allow them to be without faith, so that they are miserably
misled, and are caught in the pitiable babbling and mummery. Of
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