| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum: enchanted my axe, and when I was chopping away at my best one day,
for I was anxious to get the new house and my wife as soon as
possible, the axe slipped all at once and cut off my left leg.
"This at first seemed a great misfortune, for I knew a
one-legged man could not do very well as a wood-chopper. So I
went to a tinsmith and had him make me a new leg out of tin. The
leg worked very well, once I was used to it. But my action
angered the Wicked Witch of the East, for she had promised the old
woman I should not marry the pretty Munchkin girl. When I began
chopping again, my axe slipped and cut off my right leg. Again I
went to the tinsmith, and again he made me a leg out of tin.
The Wizard of Oz |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: The historians who, from Michelet to M. Aulard, have represented
the revolutionary crowd as having acted on its own initiative,
without leaders, do not comprehend its psychology.
CHAPTER V
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE REVOLUTIONARY ASSEMBLIES
1. Psychological Characteristics of the great Revolutionary
Assemblies.
A great political assembly, a parliament for example, is a crowd,
but a crowd which sometimes fails in effectual action on account
of the contrary sentiments of the hostile groups composing it.
The presence of these groups, actuated by different interests,
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