| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: dwellings for the first time after several days. There were barns and
peasants' cabins to destroy, and pits full of potatoes and beetroot;
the army had been without vitual, and now it fairly ran riot, the
first comers, as you might expect, making a clean sweep of everything.
"I was one of the last to come up. Luckily for me, sleep was the one
thing that I longed for just then. I caught sight of a barn and went
into it. I looked round and saw a score of generals and officers of
high rank, all of them men who, without flattery, might be called
great. Junot was there, and Narbonne, the Emperor's aide-de-camp, and
all the chiefs of the army. There were common soldiers there as well,
not one of whom would have given up his bed of straw to a marshal of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe: with fear.
"Hadn't you better get your pistols?" said Cassy, with a sneer
that froze Legree's blood. "It's time this thing was looked
into, you know. I'd like to have you go up now; _they're at it_."
"I won't go!" said Legree, with an oath.
"Why not? There an't any such thing as ghosts, you know!
Come!" and Cassy flitted up the winding stairway, laughing, and
looking back after him. "Come on."
"I believe you _are_ the devil!" said Legree. "Come back
you hag,--come back, Cass! You shan't go!"
But Cassy laughed wildly, and fled on. He heard her open the
Uncle Tom's Cabin |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: do their duty. Neither did he know that as the multitude is
extremely sensible to prestige it needs a great display of force
to impress it, and that such a display will at once suppress
hostile demonstrations. He was equally ignorant of the fact that
all gatherings should be dispersed immediately. All these things
have been taught by experience, but in 1848 these lessons had not
been grasped. At the time of the great Revolution the psychology
of crowds was even less understood.
2. How the Stability of the Racial Mind limits the Oscillations
of the Mind of the Crowd.
A people can in a sense be likened to a crowd. It possesses
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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 Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: for days, nay, for weeks--it didn't enter our heads
that we had amongst us the only living soul that
had escaped from that disaster. The man himself,
even when he learned to speak intelligibly, could
tell us very little. He remembered he had felt bet-
ter (after the ship had anchored, I suppose), and
that the darkness, the wind, and the rain took his
breath away. This looks as if he had been on deck
some time during that night. But we mustn't forget
he had been taken out of his knowledge, that he
had been sea-sick and battened down below for four
Amy Foster |
