| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Common Sense by Thomas Paine: or will not accomplish the end, and the whole affair is a felo de se;
for as the greater weight will always carry up the less, and as all
the wheels of a machine are put in motion by one, it only remains to know
which power in the constitution has the most weight, for that will govern;
and though the others, or a part of them, may clog, or, as the phrase is,
check the rapidity of its motion, yet so long as they cannot stop it,
their endeavours will be ineffectual; the first moving power will
at last have its way, and what it wants in speed, is supplied by time.
That the crown is this overbearing part in the English constitution,
needs not be mentioned, and that it derives its whole consequence
merely from being the giver of places and pensions, is self-evident,
Common Sense |
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 The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: Scotists of Cambridge, "a contest more necessary than glorious or
difficult." To be satisfactorily established, a miracle needs at
least to be recorded by an eyewitness; and the mental attainments
of the witness need to be thoroughly known besides. Unless he has
a clear conception of the difference between the natural and the
unnatural order of events, his testimony, however unimpeachable
on the score of honesty, is still worthless. To say that this
condition was fulfilled by those who described the New Testament
miracles, would be absurd. And in the face of what German
criticism has done for the early Christian documents, it would be
an excess of temerity to assert that any one of the supernatural
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
