| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Unconscious Comedians by Honore de Balzac: converted to our doctrine, you will be at the head of your art; for
you are putting into it ideas which people will understand--WHEN they
are generalized! In fifty years from now you'll be to all the world
what you are to a few of us at this moment,--a great man. The only
question is how to get along till then."
"I have just finished," resumed the great artist, his face expanding
like that of a man whose hobby is stroked, "an allegorical figure of
Harmony; and if you will come and see it, you will understand why it
should have taken me two years to paint it. Everything is in it! At
the first glance one divines the destiny of the globe. A queen holds a
shepherd's crook in her hand,--symbolical of the advancement of the
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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: The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate
result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers. This
union is helped on by the improved means of communication that
are created by modern industry and that place the workers of
different localities in contact with one another. It was just
this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local
struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle
between classes. But every class struggle is a political
struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the
Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries,
the modern proletarians, thanks to railways, achieve in a few
The Communist Manifesto |
