53. Endurance, or patience, that is the central sign of spirit; a
constancy against the cold and agony of death; and as, physically, it is
by the burning power of the air that the heat of the flesh is sustained,
so this Athena, spiritually, is the queen of all glowing virtue, the
unconsuming fire and inner lamp of life. And thus, as Hephæstus is lord
of the fire of the hand, and Apollo of the fire of the brain, so Athena
of the fire of the heart; and as Hercules wears for his chief armor the
skin of the Nemean lion, his chief enemy, whom he slew; and Apollo has
for his highest name "the Pythian," from his chief enemy, the Python
slain; so Athena bears always on her breast the deadly face of her chief
enemy slain, the Gorgonian cold, and venomous agony, that turns living
men to stone.

54. And so long as you have the fire of the heart within you, and know
the reality of it, you need to be under no alarm as to the possibility
of its chemical or mechanical analysis. The philosophers are very
humorous in their ecstasy of hope about it; but the real interest of
their discoveries in this direction is very small to humankind. It is
quite true that the tympanum of the ear vibrates under sound, and that
the surface of the water in a ditch vibrates too; but the ditch hears
nothing for all that; and my hearing is still to me as blessed a mystery
as ever, and the interval between the ditch and me quite as great. If
the trembling sound in my ears was once of the marriage-bell which began
my happiness, and is now of the passing-bell which ends it, the
difference between those two sounds to me cannot be counted by the number
of concussions. There have been some curious speculations lately as to
the conveyance of mental consciousness by "brain-waves." What does it
matter how it is conveyed? The consciousness itself is not a wave. It
may be accompanied here or there by any quantity of quivers and shakes,