s smoky fire of words
Abases that which it would elevate.

[C] But not till the whole personality of the man is dissolved and
melted--not until it is held by the divine fragment which has
created it, as a mere subject for the grave experiment and
experience--not until the whole nature has yielded and become
subject unto its higher self, can the bloom open.--("Light on the
Path.")

CES. This fellow then says that as this phoenix set on fire by the sun
and accustomed to light and flame comes to send upwards that smoke which
obscures him who has rendered her so luminous, so he, the inflamed and
illuminated enthusiast, through that which he does in praise of such an
illustrious subject which has warmed his heart and which shines in his
thought, comes rather to conceal it than to render it light for light,
sending forth that smoke the effect of the flame, in which the
substance of himself is resolved.

MAR. I, without weighing and comparing the studies of that fellow,
repeat what I said to you the other day, that praise is one of the
greatest oblations that human affection can offer to an object. And
leaving on one side the proposition of the Divine, tell me, who would
have known of Achilles, Ulysses, and all the other Greek and Trojan
chiefs? Who would have heard of all those great soldiers, the wise and
the heroes of the earth, if they had not been placed amongst the stars
and deified by the oblation of praise which has lighted the fire on the
altar of the heart of illustrious poets and other singers, so that
usually, the sacrificant, the victim and the sanctified deity, all
mounted to the skies, through the hand and the vow of a worthy and
lawful priest?

CES. Well sayest thou "of a worthy and lawful priest," for the world is
at present full of apostate ones, the which, as they are for the most
part unworthy themselves, sing the praises of other unworthy ones, so
that, asini asinos fricant. But Providence wills that these, instead of
rising to the sky, should go together to the shades of Orcus, so that
naught is the glory of him who extols and of him who is extolled; for
the one has woven a statue of straw, or carved the trunk of a tree, or
cast a piece of chalk, and the other, the idol of shame and infamy,
knows not that there is no need to wait for the keen tooth of the age
and the scythe of Saturn in order to be put down, for through those
self-same praises he gets buried alive then and