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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
of Wisdom and her mortal rival, the Encyclopædia Britannica (art. indicates the superiority of Asia textile arts."
Such is the story of the rivalry between the Goddess which, according to Arachne) "probably over Greece in the
The italics are ours, placed to mark the contrast between the 'scholastic' view and the spiritual interpretation of the legend which we shall now proceed to propound.
The rivals represent the two powers of the soul known as omniscience, which being associated with divinity is personified as the Goddess of Wisdom, and the limited faculty of Intellect appertaining to the human soul in its un-emancipated state. The difference between the two aspects of knowledge, human and divine, is well brought out in the patterns respectively woven by the competitors, one merely representing an impious conception of the world of Life after the most approved and up-to-date manner of the learned, but the other descriptive of the true nature of things, spiritual and material, and of the consequences that flow from impiety and foolish prating. With its 'free-thinking' proclivities, intellect cannot but resent the notion of the excellence of her handiwork being the result of the inspiration of the goddess, though there being only one source of knowledge which is infinite in its capacity and scope, finite thought cannot but derive its oil of existence from the original and, therefore, Olympian 'wells.' Hence, truth is only in accordance with the vox populi in this instance. Again, in so far as knowledge may be said to be a presentation of the world of
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