| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: so that he does not know whether I am rich or poor. He only knows that
I dress well and look decent in the clothes he makes for me. I shall
tell him that an uncle of mine has dropped in from the country, and
that his indifference in matters of dress is quite a discredit to me
in the upper circles where I am trying to find a wife.--It will not be
Humann if he sends in his bill before three months."
The Doctor thought this a capital idea for a vaudeville, but poor
enough in real life, and doubted my success. But I give you my word of
honor, Humann dressed Marcas, and, being an artist, turned him out as
a political personage ought to be dressed.
Juste lent Marcas two hundred francs in gold, the product of two
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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: adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to
introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to
become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world
after its own image.
The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the
towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the
urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued
a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural
life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so
it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on
the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois,
The Communist Manifesto |
