SEASONS

Spring and autumn are Christian seasons,

The one corresponding to the instinctual side of Christ,

The other to His spiritual side,

Spring a kind of diluted summer,

Autumn ... a diluted winter,

Semi-pagan and semi-transcendental respectively.

Summer and winter, however, are the pagan

And transcendental seasons, corresponding

To the Father and to the Holy Ghost.

Summer draws one closer to Hell,

The burning heat of the sun scorching the flesh

And stultifying the mind.

Winter, by contrast, draws one closer to Heaven,

The sun at too great a distance to be of any real menace,

The icy air freezing the flesh and quickening the mind.

Which is better - to burn or to freeze?

The flesh prefers the former,

And most people regret the passing of summer,

Their bodies attuned to its heathen warmth

And their senses gratified by nature's pagan show,

The season a holiday from transcendental morals

And puritanical obligations.

Winter, then, is a negative thing,

The bitter inclemencies unmoved by human woe,

Indifferent to human want.

Rare is the man who is grateful for winter,

Who sees in the gentler sun

A reprieve from pagan tyranny,

Whose mind dominates the flesh

And can regard its revolt

With icy contempt or indifference,

Preferring the season of the mind.

Such a man is not Christian, still less pagan,

But transcendental, transvaluated within himself

And living not in the mind for the body,

But in the body for the mind.

If, at present, this man is the exception,

In the future he will become the rule -

Unafraid of winter, contemptuous of the sun!