CYCLE THREE

1. Philosophers (if genuine) deal with truth, poets, by contrast, with illusion, while playwrights and novelists respectively deal - or should deal - with fact and fiction.

2. Disillusioned by illusion, i.e. beauty, a certain poet gravitated towards truth but was unable, through delusion, to achieve it.

3. Our age revels in the beauties of illusion and the illusions of beauty, being afraid, or unwilling, to approach truth (for which one must first become disillusioned with beauty and willing to undergo any amount of delusion).

4. For delusion seems to stand in between illusion and truth, beauty and wisdom (of a divine order), like an amoral half-way house between the one and the other.

5. Disillusionment with illusion may lead to truth, but does disillusionment with fiction lead to fact? Yes, I guess you could say it does, albeit one would be going backwards from phenomenal subjectivity to phenomenal objectivity, as from lower-class male to female, instead of forwards, as it were, from noumenal objectivity to noumenal subjectivity, as from upper-class female to male.

6. Thus it seems that illusion and fact appertain no less to the female side of life than ...fiction and truth to its male side, and that you cannot expect to understand or comprehend the one, in either context, without due reference to the other, since what is truth without illusion or fiction without fact?

7. Certainly, truth and illusion, corresponding to wisdom and beauty, are upper-class alternatives germane to Gods and Devils, whereas fiction and fact, corresponding to knowledge and strength, are their lower-class counterparts, as germane to men and women.

8. To contrast the appearance of illusion (beauty) with the essence of truth (wisdom), as one would contrast the quantity of fact (strength) with the quality of fiction (knowledge).

9. Just as illusion has especially intimate connections with the will, and truth, its noumenal antithesis, no-less intimate connections with the soul, so fact has especially intimate connections with the spirit, and fiction, its phenomenal antithesis, no-less intimate connections with the ego.

10. The power of illusion and the contentment of truth stand noumenally above the glory of fact and the form of fiction, which is to say, the will of beauty and the soul of wisdom stand noumenally above the spirit of strength and the ego of knowledge.

11. In such fashion, the Devil of Hell and the God of Heaven stand above the woman of purgatory and the man of (the) earth.

12. Note how the above absolutes are accorded initial capitals and the relativities not, given their phenomenal rather than noumenal status. For it is normal - is it not? - to write of the Devil and God (with the aid of initial capitals) but of woman and man (in lower case), as of Hell and Heaven, but of purgatory and the earth.

13. Be that as it may, all such terms are equally applicable to their respective contexts and equally important, since he who dismisses the relevance of terms like God and the Devil to their respective contexts might just as well write off men and women as well. Or write off purgatory and the earth if he chooses, somewhat arbitrarily, and as the fruit of ignorance, to dismiss Heaven and Hell.

14. Frankly there is nothing fanciful here. All these terms have intimate associations with the Elements - the Devil and Hell with fire, God and Heaven with air, woman and purgatory with water, and man and the earth with vegetation (earth). But shallow-pates will persist in maintaining the contrary, in denying such associations, and shallow-pates there have and always will be!

15. The shallowest of all professional or vocational men are, of course, scientists, who are normally among the first to deny God and/or Heaven, since they generally operate under the aegis of the Devil and/or Hell.

16. Of course, one can be very shallow, or superficial, and uphold a shallow - and usually primitive - concept or notion of God. This, unfortunately, is all too prevalent these days, in our media-besotted age.