The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: death if, as the doctors say, nursing can save him. But suppose that
in spite of you and me, the count dies,--well, then, if you were
loved, oh, adored, by a man of a heart and soul that are worthy of
you--"
"I may have wished for such love, foolishly, but I have never met with
it."
"Perhaps you are mistaken--"
Clementine looked fixedly at Thaddeus, imagining that there was less
of love than of cupidity in his thoughts; her eyes measured him from
head to foot and poured contempt upon him; then she crushed him with
the words, "Poor Malaga!" uttered in tones which a great lady alone
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: as such, I know one thing that bears on the economic question
- I know the imperfection of man's faculty for business. The
Anarchists, who count some rugged elements of common sense
among what seem to me their tragic errors, have said upon
this matter all that I could wish to say, and condemned
beforehand great economical polities. So far it is obvious
that they are right; they may be right also in predicting a
period of communal independence, and they may even be right
in thinking that desirable. But the rise of communes is none
the less the end of economic equality, just when we were told
it was beginning. Communes will not be all equal in extent,
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