| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: chateau de Blois had come to Amboise to assist at this festival of
death, precisely as it passed, a little later, from the pleasures of a
court to the perils of war, with an easy facility, which will always
seem to foreigners one of the main supports of their policy toward
France.
The poor syndic of the furriers of Paris was filled with the keenest
joy at not seeing his son among the fifty-seven gentlemen who were
condemned to die.
At a sign from the Duc de Guise, the clerk seated on the scaffold
cried in a loud voice:--
"Jean-Louis-Alberic, Baron de Raunay, guilty of heresy, of the crime
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: some of them now doubt that of Buddha, and will see in him
nothing more than a solar myth or a development of the legend of
Hercules. They will doubtless console themselves easily for this
uncertainty, for, better initiated than we are to-day in the
characteristics and psychology of crowds, they will know that
history is scarcely capable of preserving the memory of anything
except myths.
3. THE EXAGGERATION AND INGENUOUSNESS OF THE SENTIMENTS OF CROWDS.
Whether the feelings exhibited by a crowd be good or bad, they
present the double character of being very simple and very
exaggerated. On this point, as on so many others, an individual
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