| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: he has resigned from the ministry. Do not think for a moment,
Monseigneur, that Rabourdin ever had the absurd thought (as des
Lupeaulx tries to make it believed) to change the admirable
centralization of power."
The Minister [to himself]. "I have made a mistake" [is silent a
moment]. "No matter; we shall never be lacking in plans for reform."
De la Briere. "It is not ideas, but men capable of executing them that
we lack."
Des Lupeaulx, that adroit advocate of abuses came into the minister's
study at this moment.
"Monseigneur, I start at once for my election."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: as somebody once said, are the things that do not concern us. As
long as a thing is useful or necessary to us, or affects us in any
way, either for pain or for pleasure, or appeals strongly to our
sympathies, or is a vital part of the environment in which we live,
it is outside the proper sphere of art. To art's subject-matter we
should be more or less indifferent. We should, at any rate, have
no preferences, no prejudices, no partisan feeling of any kind. It
is exactly because Hecuba is nothing to us that her sorrows are
such an admirable motive for a tragedy. I do not know anything in
the whole history of literature sadder than the artistic career of
Charles Reade. He wrote one beautiful book, THE CLOISTER AND THE
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