| 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: remorse of conscience, and the ministers, to quiet him, promised to
appoint Rabourdin unless higher powers intervened."
Bixiou. "Gentlemen, are you all against me? seven to one,--for I know
which side you'll take, Monsieur Phellion. Well, I'll bet a dinner
costing five hundred francs at the Rocher de Cancale that Rabourdin
does not get La Billardiere's place. That will cost you only a hundred
francs each, and I'm risking five hundred,--five to one against me! Do
you take it up?" [Shouting into the next room.] "Du Bruel, what say
you?"
Phellion [laying down his pen]. "Monsieur, may I ask on what you base
that contingent proposal?--for contingent it is. But stay, I am wrong
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Proposed Roads To Freedom by Bertrand Russell: members out of a total of 397. After the death of
Bebel, the Revisionists, who received their first
impulse from Bernstein, overcame the more strict
Marxians, and the party became in effect merely one
of advanced Radicalism. It is too soon to guess what
will be the effect of the split between Majority and
Minority Socialists which has occurred during the
war. There is in Germany hardly a trace of Syndicalism;
its characteristic doctrine, the preference of
industrial to political action, has found scarcely
any support.
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