| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: love--and Dinah wanted to love as much as to be loved--have an
instinctive aversion for men who are devoted to an absorbing
occupation; in spite of superiority, they are all women in the matter
of encroachment. Lousteau, a poet and journalist, and a libertine with
a veneer of misanthropy, had that tinsel of the intellect, and led the
half-idle life that attracts women. The blunt good sense and keen
insight of the really great man weighed upon Dinah, who would not
confess her own smallness even to herself. She said in her mind--"The
doctor is perhaps the better man, but I do not like him."
Then, again, she reflected on his professional duties, wondering
whether a woman could ever be anything but a /subject/ to a medical
 The Muse of the Department |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Works of Samuel Johnson by Samuel Johnson: but the radical vigour requisite to make it perennial
is exhausted, and all that can be hoped afterwards
is languor and sterility.
The reigning errour of mankind is, that we are
not content with the conditions on which the goods
of life are granted. No man is insensible of the
value of knowledge, the advantages of health, or
the convenience of plenty, but every day shews us
those on whom the conviction is without effect.
Knowledge is praised and desired by multitudes
whom her charms could never rouse from the couch
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