| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: son.
This is not a marriage story. It wasn't so bad
as that with me. My action, rash as it was, had
more the character of divorce--almost of deser-
tion. For no reason on which a sensible person
could put a finger I threw up my job--chucked
my berth--left the ship of which the worst that
could be said was that she was a steamship and
therefore, perhaps, not entitled to that blind
loyalty which. . . . However, it's no use try-
ing to put a gloss on what even at the time I myself
The Shadow Line |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: ``without any moral inspiration, which dreams of pulling humanity
down to the lowest level, and for which any superiority, even of
culture, is an offence to society. . . it is the sentiment of
ignoble equality which animated the Jacobin butchers when they
struck off the head of a Lavoisier or a Chenier.
This hatred of superiority, the most prominent element in the
modern progress of Socialism, is not the only characteristic of
the new spirit created by democratic ideas.
Other consequences, although indirect, are not less profound.
Such, for example, are the progress of ``statism,'' the
diminution of the power of the bourgeoisie, the increasing
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