| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: or because it was the standard thing to have a sleeping-porch.
Just as he was an Elk, a Booster, and a member of the Chamber of Commerce,
just as the priests of the Presbyterian Church determined his every religious
belief and the senators who controlled the Republican Party decided in little
smoky rooms in Washington what he should think about disarmament, tariff, and
Germany, so did the large national advertisers fix the surface of his life,
fix what he believed to be his individuality. These standard advertised
wares--toothpastes, socks, tires, cameras, instantaneous hot-water
heaters--were his symbols and proofs of excellence; at first the signs, then
the substitutes, for joy and passion and wisdom.
But none of these advertised tokens of financial and social success was more
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: remain unchanged; while the dust of ages gathered inch-deep over
the shelves and counter, and partly filled an old pair of scales,
as if it were of value enough to be weighed. It treasured itself
up, too, in the half-open till, where there still lingered a base
sixpence, worth neither more nor less than the hereditary pride
which had here been put to shame. Such had been the state and
condition of the little shop in old Hepzibah's childhood, when
she and her brother used to play at hide-and-seek in its forsaken
precincts. So it had remained, until within a few days past.
But Now, though the shop-window was still closely
curtained from the public gaze, a remarkable change had taken
House of Seven Gables |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Nana, Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille by Emile Zola: place to Vulcan, who cried, "I've hit on a plan!" The rest of the
act did not seem very clear. The inquiry ended in a final galop
after which Jupiter, breathless, streaming with perspiration and
minus his crown, declared that the little women of Earth were
delicious and that the men were all to blame.
The curtain was falling, when certain voices, rising above the storm
of bravos, cried uproariously:
"All! All!"
Thereupon the curtain rose again; the artistes reappeared hand in
hand. In the middle of the line Nana and Rose Mignon stood side by
side, bowing and curtsying. The audience applauded; the clappers
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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 Crowd by Gustave le Bon: transformation, and the transformation is so profound as to
change the miser into a spendthrift, the sceptic into a believer,
the honest man into a criminal, and the coward into a hero. The
renunciation of all its privileges which the nobility voted in a
moment of enthusiasm during the celebrated night of August 4,
1789, would certainly never have been consented to by any of its
members taken singly.
The conclusion to be drawn from what precedes is, that the crowd
is always intellectually inferior to the isolated individual, but
that, from the point of view of feelings and of the acts these
feelings provoke, the crowd may, according to circumstances, he
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