| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ursula by Honore de Balzac: mistress induced him to take note of the two women.
"Do you believe in spirits?" Zelie asked him.
"What do you believe in?" he answered, smiling.
"They are all sly," thought Zelie,--"every one of them! They want to
deceive us. That old priest and the old justice and that young scamp
Savinien have got some plan in their heads. Dreams! no more dreams
than there are hairs on the palm of my hand."
With two stiff, curt bows she left the room.
"I know why Savinien went to Fontainebleau," said Ursula to the abbe,
telling him about the duel and begging him to use his influence to
prevent it.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: conditions had not immigrated along with them. In contact with
German social conditions, this French literature lost all its
immediate practical significance, and assumed a purely literary
aspect. Thus, to the German philosophers of the eighteenth
century, the demands of the first French Revolution were nothing
more than the demands of "Practical Reason" in general, and the
utterance of the will of the revolutionary French bourgeoisie
signified in their eyes the law of pure Will, of Will as it was
bound to be, of true human Will generally.
The world of the German literate consisted solely in bringing
the new French ideas into harmony with their ancient
 The Communist Manifesto |