| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri: statistics from the lists of persons convicted at the assize
courts and correctional tribunals, taking an average of the years
1877-81, which is not sensibly affected by the results of
succeeding years.
It will be seen that the average of relapses for crimes against
the person is higher than the average for the most serious cases
of murderous and indecent assault, which are clearly an outcome of
the most anti-social tendencies (such as parricide, murder, rape,
inflicting bodily harm on parents, &c.). Thus homicide and fatal
wounding, though relapse is very frequent in these cases, still
display a less abnormal and more occasional character by their
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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 St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: soldier and the camp kettle, the prisoner and his prison rations,
the fugitive and the horrors of the covered cart!
CHAPTER XVII - THE DESPATCH-BOX
THE doctor had scarce finished his meal before he hastened with an
apology to attend upon his patient; and almost immediately after I
was myself summoned and ushered up the great staircase and along
interminable corridors to the bedside of my great-uncle the Count.
You are to think that up to the present moment I had not set eyes
on this formidable personage, only on the evidences of his wealth
and kindness. You are to think besides that I had heard him
miscalled and abused from my earliest childhood up. The first of
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