| 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: magistrate, M. Tarde, has also verified this fact in his
researches on the crimes of crowds. It is only, then, with
respect to sentiment that crowds can rise to a very high or, on
the contrary, descend to a very low level.
4. THE INTOLERANCE, DICTATORIALNESS AND CONSERVATISM OF CROWDS.
Crowds are only cognisant of simple and extreme sentiments; the
opinions, ideas, and beliefs suggested to them are accepted or
rejected as a whole, and considered as absolute truths or as not
less absolute errors. This is always the case with beliefs
induced by a process of suggestion instead of engendered by
reasoning. Every one is aware of the intolerance that
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne: Captain Nemo's life was passing, even to his grave, which he had
prepared in one of its deepest abysses. There, not one of the ocean's
monsters could trouble the last sleep of the crew of the Nautilus,
of those friends riveted to each other in death as in life.
"Nor any man, either," had added the Captain. Still the same fierce,
implacable defiance towards human society!
I could no longer content myself with the theory which satisfied Conseil.
That worthy fellow persisted in seeing in the Commander of
the Nautilus one of those unknown servants who return mankind
contempt for indifference. For him, he was a misunderstood
genius who, tired of earth's deceptions, had taken refuge in this
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: What were lawyers made of, she wondered? Didn't the man guess,
by the mere look in her eyes and the sound of her voice, that
she would never, as long as she lived, forget a word of that
letter--that night after night she would lie down, as she was
lying down to-night, to stare wide-eyed for hours into the
darkness, while a voice in her brain monotonously hammered out:
"Nick dear, it was July when you left me ..." and so on, word
after word, down to the last fatal syllable?
XXII
STREFFORD was leaving for England.
Once assured that Susy had taken the first step toward freeing
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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 Herodias by Gustave Flaubert: and ornamental towers that stood out like jewels in this crown of
stone overhanging an abyss.
Within the high walls stood a palace, adorned with many richly carved
arches, and surrounded by a terrace that on one side of the building
spread out below a wide balcony made of sycamore wood, upon which tall
poles had been erected to support an awning.
One morning, just before sunrise, the tetrarch, Herod-Antipas, came
out alone upon the balcony. He leaned against one of the columns and
looked about him.
The crests of the hill-tops in the valley below the palace were just
discernible in the light of the false dawn, although their bases,
Herodias |
