| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: canonical, dogmatic prepossession went very much further than
critical acumen. Nor is this strange when we reflect that
critical discrimination in questions of literary authenticity is
one of the latest acquisitions of the cultivated human mind. In
the early ages of the Church the evidence of the genuineness of
any literary production was never weighed critically; writings
containing doctrines acceptable to the majority of Christians
were quoted as authoritative while writings which supplied no
dogmatic want were overlooked, or perhaps condemned as
apocryphal. A striking instance of this is furnished by the
fortunes of the Apocalypse. Although perhaps the best
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: hearing."
The swarthy boy of sixteen stood watching his master's fingers, delicate
and white, as they played. Thus, of his own accord, he had begun to watch
them when a child of six; and the Padre had taken the wild, half-scared,
spellbound creature and made a musician of him.
"There, Felipe!" he said now. "Can you do it? Slower, and more softly,
muchacho mio. It is about the death of a man, and it should go with our
bell."
The boy listened. "Then the father has played it a tone too low," said
he, "for our bell rings the note of sol, or something very near it, as
the father must surely know." He placed the melody in the right key--an
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