| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: ALCIBIADES: Quite true.
SOCRATES: And cannot you persuade one man about that of which you can
persuade many?
ALCIBIADES: I suppose so.
SOCRATES: And that of which you can persuade either is clearly what you
know?
ALCIBIADES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And the only difference between one who argues as we are doing,
and the orator who is addressing an assembly, is that the one seeks to
persuade a number, and the other an individual, of the same things.
ALCIBIADES: I suppose so.
|
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: class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have
abolished its own supremacy as a class.
In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and
class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the
free development of each is the condition for the free
development of all.
III SOCIALIST AND COMMUNIST LITERATURE
1. REACTIONARY SOCIALISM
A. Feudal Socialism
Owing to their historical position, it became the vocation of
the aristocracies of France and England to write pamphlets
The Communist Manifesto |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: form, criticism would have found nothing left for her to
censure. A similar mark of precipitate work is the number of
adjectives tumultuously heaped together, sometimes to help
out the sense, and sometimes (as one cannot but suspect) to
help out the sound of the verses. I do not believe, for
instance, that Lord Lytton himself would defend the lines in
which we are told how Laocoon 'Revealed to Roman crowds, now
CHRISTIAN grown, That PAGAN anguish which, in PARIAN stone,
The RHODIAN artist,' and so on. It is not only that this is
bad in itself; but that it is unworthy of the company in
which it is found; that such verses should not have appeared
|
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 Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: a hundred crowns; go and kill Monsieur So-and-so for me,' and you
could sup quietly after turning some one off into the dark for
the least thing in the world. But nowadays I propose to put you
in the way of a handsome fortune; you have only to nod your head,
it won't compromise you in any way, and you hesitate. 'Tis an
effeminate age."
Eugene accepted the draft, and received the banknotes in exchange
for it.
"Well, well. Come, now, let us talk rationally," Vautrin
continued. "I mean to leave this country in a few months' time
for America, and set about planting tobacco. I will send you the
Father Goriot |
