| 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: The successive action of these two kinds of factors is to be
traced in all great historical events. The French Revolution--to
cite but one of the most striking of such events--had among its
remote factors the writings of the philosophers, the exactions of
the nobility, and the progress of scientific thought. The mind
of the masses, thus prepared, was then easily roused by such
immediate factors as the speeches of orators, and the resistance
of the court party to insignificant reforms.
Among the remote factors there are some of a general nature,
which are found to underlie all the beliefs and opinions of
crowds. They are race, traditions, time, institutions, and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Summer by Edith Wharton: she pitilessly took its measure. There it lay, a
weather-beaten sunburnt village of the hills, abandoned
of men, left apart by railway, trolley, telegraph, and
all the forces that link life to life in modern
communities. It had no shops, no theatres, no
lectures, no "business block"; only a church that was
opened every other Sunday if the state of the roads
permitted, and a library for which no new books had
been bought for twenty years, and where the old ones
mouldered undisturbed on the damp shelves. Yet Charity
Royall had always been told that she ought to consider
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: was you, Yorick, replied Eugenius, so would I.
Which shews they had both read Longinus--
For my own part, I am resolved never to read any book but my own, as long
as I live.
Chapter 4.XXX.
I wish my uncle Toby had been a water-drinker; for then the thing had been
accounted for, That the first moment Widow Wadman saw him, she felt
something stirring within her in his favour--Something!--something.
--Something perhaps more than friendship--less than love--something--no
matter what--no matter where--I would not give a single hair off my mule's
tail, and be obliged to pluck it off myself (indeed the villain has not
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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 The Economist by Xenophon: department in the art of husbandry?
[1] i.e. of fruit trees, the vine, olive, fig, etc.
Isch. Certainly it is.
Soc. How is it, then, that I can know about the processes of sowing
and at the same time have no knowledge about planting?
Isch. Is it so certain that you have no knowledge?
Soc. How can you ask me? when I neither know the sort of soil in which
to plant, nor yet the depth of hole[2] the plant requires, nor the
breadth, or length of ground in which it needs to be embedded;[3] nor
lastly, how to lay the plant in earth, with any hope of fostering its
growth.[4]
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