| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: famine for every town dweller. Consequently, though the
desperation of hunger and resentment against inevitable
requisitions may breed riots and revolts here and there
throughout the country, the men who, in other
circumstances, might coordinate such events, will refrain
from doing anything of the sort. I do not say that collapse is
impossible. I do say that it would be extremely undesirable
from the point of view of almost everybody in Russia.
Collapse of the present Government would mean at best a
reproduction of the circumstances of 1917, with the
difference that no intervention from without would be
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: not yet made their offing, they were still on the full stretch
going the one way, when I had already gone about ship and was
sheering off the other. Like a fool I had come out, doing my five
knots; like a fool I went back again. It must have been the
funniest thing to see, and what knocked me silly, this time no one
laughed; only one old woman gave a kind of pious moan, the way you
have heard Dissenters in their chapels at the sermon.
"I never saw such fools of Kanakas as your people here," I said
once to Uma, glancing out of the window at the starers.
"Savvy nothing," says Uma, with a kind of disgusted air that she
was good at.
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