| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: individuals. From the intellectual point of view an abyss may
exist between a great mathematician and his boot maker, but from
the point of view of character the difference is most often
slight or non-existent.
It is precisely these general qualities of character, governed by
forces of which we are unconscious, and possessed by the majority
of the normal individuals of a race in much the same degree--it
is precisely these qualities, I say, that in crowds become common
property. In the collective mind the intellectual aptitudes of
the individuals, and in consequence their individuality, are
weakened. The heterogeneous is swamped by the homogeneous, and
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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 Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: "Well, if he is a great artist, I prefer a great artist like you,"
said Madame Vervelle.
The ways of genius had ruffled up these orderly bourgeois.
The phase of autumn so pleasantly named "Saint Martin's summer" was
just beginning. With the timidity of a neophyte in presence of a man
of genius, Vervelle risked giving Fougeres an invitation to come out
to his country-house on the following Sunday. He knew, he said, how
little attraction a plain bourgeois family could offer to an artist.
"You artists," he continued, "want emotions, great scenes, and witty
talk; but you'll find good wines, and I rely on my collection of
pictures to compensate an artist like you for the bore of dining with
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