ife, who themselves receive it from the
Condition of Fire, falls upon the Winding Path called the Path of the
Serpent, and that inflowing coming alike to men and to animals is called
natural. There is another inflow which is not natural but intellectual,
and is from the fire; and it descends through souls who pass for a lengthy
or a brief period out of the mirror life, as we in sleep out of the bodily
life, and though it may fall upon a sleeping serpent, it falls principally
upon straight paths. In so far as a man is like all other men, the inflow
finds him upon the winding path, and in so far as he is a saint or sage,
upon the straight path.

XVI

Daemon and man are opposites; man passes from heterogeneous objects to the
simplicity of fire, and the Daemon is drawn to objects because through
them he obtains power, the extremity of choice. For only in men's minds
can he meet even those in the Condition of Fire who are not of his own
kin. He, by using his mediatorial shades, brings man again and again to
the place of choice, heightening temptation that the choice may be as
final as possible, imposing his own lucidity upon events, leading his
victim to whatever among works not impossible is the most difficult. He
suffers with man as some firm-souled man suffers with the woman he but
loves the better because she is extravagant and fickle. His descending
power is neither the winding nor the straight line but zigzag,
illuminating the passive and active properties, the tree's two sorts of
fruit: it is the sudden lightning, for all his acts of power are
instantaneous. We perceive in a pulsation of the artery, and after slowly
decline.

XVII

Each Daemon is drawn to whatever man or, if its nature is more general, to
whatever nation it most differs from, and it shapes into its own image
the antithetical dream of man or nation. The Jews had already shown by the
precious metals, by the ostentatious wealth of Solomon's temple, the
passion that has made them the money-lenders of the modern world. If they
had not been rapacious, lustful, narrow and persecuting beyond the people
of their time, the incarnation had been impossible; but it was an
intellectual impulse from the Condition of Fire that shaped their
antithetical self into that of the classic world. So always it is an
impulse from some Daemon that gives to our vague, unsatisfied desire,
beauty, a meaning and a form all can accept.

XVIII

Only in rapid and subtle