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definition : "the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to an age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited" origin coined by lewis in surprised by joy . concept is central in his essay, on reading old books

definition : the discipline that requires believers to evaluate the urgency of a theological issue or question before moving forward with debate and discussion origin medical workers are trained to practice a discipline known as "triage". it allows them to make quick evaluations about the severity of each patient's condition and then determine priorities for treatment based on those evaluations. triage helps medical personnel answer the important questions: "which patients should be seen first? which patient conditions are more urgent? does anyone require immediate surgery?" in an emergency room, it's not first come, first served basis. they evaluate each person's condition and treat them accordingly. why? because they have limited resources. they can't treat everybody at the same time, so they have to prioritize. in his article, albert mohler suggests the "discipline of theological triage", which would require believers to evaluate the urgency of a theological issue or question before moving forward with debate and discussion. he suggests three different levels of theological urgency: first-level theological issues first-level theological issues would include "those doctrines most central and essential to the christian faith". this would include the doctrines of the trinity, the full deity and humanity of jesus christ, justification by faith, and the authority of scripture. any denial of these doctrines would be heresy. if you deny these truths, you are, by definition, not a christian. second-level theological issues this level includes doctrines that believing christians may disagree on, but this disagreement often creates significant boundaries. these differences usually define the boundaries between congregations and especially denominations. second-order issues would include the meaning and mode of baptism, church polity and government, the nature of pastoral leadership, third-level theological issues third-order issues are "doctrines over which christians may disagree and remain in close fellowship, even within local congregations". this includes debates over eschatological timelines, interpretation of difficult texts, and ministry philosophy. this structure of theological triage helps us explain the problems that arise in debates between christians over theological issues. if both sides do not agree on the urgency of the issue at hand, the debate can quickly become unhelpful. mohler describes what this looks like in the two extremes: "the error of theological liberalism is evident in a basic disrespect for biblical authority and the church's treasury of truth. the mark of true liberalism is the refusal to admit that first-order theological issues even exist. liberals treat first-order doctrines as if they were merely third-order in importance, and doctrinal ambiguity is the inevitable result." "fundamentalism, on the other hand, tends toward the opposite error. the misjudgment of true fundamentalism is the belief that all disagreements concern first-order doctrines. thus, third-order issues are raised to a first-order importance, and christians are wrongly and harmfully divided." cross-references are some doctrines more foundational than others? can an error concerning a secondary doctrine may rest upon the denial of a primary doctrine?

front cover opening lines i have no intention of explaining how the correspondence which i now offer to the public fell into my hands. preface, "the screwtape letters", c.s. lewis contents epigraph preface chapter 1-31 screwtape proposes a toast summary this book is a collection of letters written to a "junior tempter" named wormwood from his uncle screwtape. as you read, you'll learn something about the bizarre relationship between uncle and nephew and the mostly fictional description of the demon (or tempter) world. but beside these purely entertaining bits, you'll also learn from lewis' unique take on spiritual warfare. if you've read other non-fiction books from lewis, you will find common themes in this one. but these themes are transposed into a harsh and dissonant tune. what lewis normally speaks of as vile is described here as desirable. and what lewis praises is described here as revolting. the "god" of the tempter's world is referred to as "our father below", and the one true god is simply called the "enemy". i think this is the most startling part of reading the book. it will probably take you a few chapters to get used to it. after the book was published, lewis said this about the process of writing it: i was often asked or advised to add to the original screwtape letters, but for many years i felt not the least inclination to do it. though i had never written anything more easily, i never wrote with less enjoyment. the ease came, no doubt, from the fact that the device of diabolical letters, once you have thought of it, exploits itself spontaneously, like swifts big and little men, or the medical and ethical philosophy of erewhon, as ansteys garuda stone. it would run away with you for a thousand pages if you gave it its head. but though it was easy to twist ones mind into the diabolical attitude, it was not fun, or not for long. the strain produced a sort of spiritual cramp. the world into which i had to project myself while i spoke through screwtape was all dust, grit, thirst and itch. every trace of beauty, freshness and geniality had to be excluded. it almost smothered me before i was done. it would have smothered my readers if i had prolonged it. i had, moreover, a sort of grudge against my book for not being a different book which no one could write. thankfully, we do not have to live in this world like lewis did for however long it took him to write the book. we just get to visit. and if you're planning a visit, prepare yourself for something an experience that is both comically entertaining and gravely serious. it will change your view of sin, temptation, and spiritual warfare. and it will also make you smile, which, i think, is also a part of effective spiritual warfare. it was luther who said, "the best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." i think he's right here. i think there is a way to laugh at satan without being arrogant or frivolous. after all, we're not laughing at our own joke. we're laughing at a joke that's been making the rounds since the resurrection. so if some of our more severe brethren accuse us of being a tad too flippant about something so serious, i think we can respectfully and accurately point them to colossians 2:15 and say, "don't look at me. jesus started it." citations preface there are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. one is to disbelieve in their existence. the other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. they themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight. the sort of script which is used in this book can be very easily obtained by anyone who has once learned the knack; but ill-disposed or excitable people who might make a bad use of it shall not learn it from me. chapters/letters your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. he doesn't think of doctrines as primarily true or false, but as academic or practical, outworn or contemporary, conventional or ruthless. jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the church. don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! make him think it is strong, or stark, or courageous that it is the philosophy of the future. thats the sort of thing he cares about. do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patients soul. the great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. the malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary. there is no good at all in inflaming his hatred of germans if, at the same time, a pernicious habit of charity is growing up between him and his mother, his employer, and the man he meets in the train. think of your man as a series of concentric circles, his will being the innermost, his intellect coming next, and finally his fantasy. you can hardly hope, at once, to exclude from all the circles everything that smells of the enemy: but you must keep on shoving all the virtues outward till they are finally located in the circle of fantasy, and all the desirable qualities inward into the will. it is only in so far as they reach the will and are there embodied in habits that the virtues are really fatal to us. i had not forgotten my promise to consider whether we should make the patient an extreme patriot or an extreme pacifist. all extremes, except extreme devotion to the enemy, are to be encouraged. not always, of course, but at this period. some ages are lukewarm and complacent, and then it is our business to soothe them yet faster asleep. other ages, of which the present is one, are unbalanced and prone to faction, and it is our business to inflame them. whichever he adopts, your main task will be the same. let him begin by treating the patriotism or the pacifism as a part of his religion. then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the cause, in which christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of the british war-effort or of pacifism. the attitude which you want to guard against is that in which temporal affairs are treated primarily as material for obedience. once you have made the world an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the enemy's ground. i know we have won many a soul through pleasure. all the same, it is his invention, not ours. he made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. all we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which he has forbidden. hence we always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its maker, and least pleasurable. an ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula. it is more certain; and its better style. flippancy is the best of all. in the first place it is very economical. only a clever human can make a real joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. among flippant people the joke is always assumed to have been made. no one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it. if prolonged, the habit of flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour-plating against the enemy that i know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter. it is a thousand miles away from joy: it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practise it. you will say that these are very small sins; and doubt-less, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. but do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the enemy. it does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the light and out into the nothing. murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. indeed the safest road to hell is the gradual one the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts our business is to get them away from the eternal, and from the present. with this in view, we sometimes tempt a human to live in the past. but this is of limited value, for they have some real knowledge of the past and it has a determinate nature and, to that extent, resembles eternity. it is far better to make them live in the future. biological necessity makes all their passions point in that direction already, so that thought about the future inflames hope and fear. also, it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities. in a word, the future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. it is the most completely temporal part of time for the past is frozen and no longer flows, and the present is all lit up with eternal rays. hence the encouragement we have given to all those schemes of thought such as creative evolution, scientific humanism, or communism, which fix mens affections on the future, on the very core of temporality. hence nearly all vices are rooted in the future. gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead. the humans live in time but our enemy destines them to eternity. he therefore, i believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the present. for the present is the point at which time touches eternity. of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which our enemy has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them. he's a hedonist at heart. all those fasts and vigils and stakes and crosses are only a facade. or only like foam on the seashore. out at sea, out in his sea, there is pleasure, and more pleasure. he makes no secret of it; at his right hand are pleasures for evermore. ugh! i don't think he has the least inkling of that high and austere mystery to which we rise in the miserific vision. he's vulgar, wormwood. he has a bourgeois mind. he has filled his world full of pleasures. there are things for humans to do all day long without his minding in the least sleeping, washing, eating, drinking, making love, playing, praying, working. everything has to be twisted before its any use to us. we fight under cruel disadvantages. nothing is naturally on our side. adversaria in 1947, lewis appeared on the cover of time , with an image of a devil off to the side. vol. 2 (p. 758) of lewis's letters includes lewis's response to a mr. smoot (jan. 1947), who had indexed the screwtape letters . lewis disagreed that subsequent editions should be indexed, since that would "stamp it as deadly serious." lewis preferred to think of it as "a kind of joke."

front cover opening lines this book is written partly in answer to requests that i would tell how i passed from atheism to christianity and partly to correct one or two false notions that eem to have got about. how far the story matters to anyone but myself depends on the degree to which others have experienced what i call 'joy'. preface, surprised by joy, c.s. lewis contents dedication epigraph preface i the first years il concentration camp iil mountbracken and campbell iv i broaden my mind v renaissance vi bloodery vii light and shade viii release ix the great knock x fortune's smile xi check xii guns and good company xiii the new look xiv checkmate xv the beginning citations but, of course, what mattered most of all was my deep-seated hatred of authority, my monstrous individualism, my lawlessness. no word in my vocabulary expressed deeper hatred than the word interference. but christianity placed at the centre what then seemed to me a transcendental interferer. if its picture were true then no sort of 'treaty with reality' could ever be possible. there was no region even in the innermost depth of one's soul (nay, there least of all) which one could surround with a barbed wire fence and guard with a notice no admittance. and that was what i wanted; some area, however small, of which i could say to all other beings, "this is my business and mine only." adversaria title of the book comes from the william wordsworth line: "surprised by joy-impatient as the wind." cross-references the blue flower album by the gray havens is inspired by this book, where lewis writes that “it soon became important” to him to become a “votary of the blue flower.” he does not mention the “blue flower” again. but the phrase is a kind of hyperlink to the romantic tradition. the blue flower is an icon or symbol of sehnsucht , the longing that becomes so central to lewis’s account of joy.

front cover opening lines what excuses can i possibly make for this book? alcohol was not directly involved. i do not (to my knowledge) have a diseased brain. i've never used drugs. but that's not entirely true. spring is a drug to me. so is christmas. love, poetry, wind, smells, lightning, children, ants, very small beetles all drugs in their own way. it's not my fault. those things made me write this book. those things and a few others, both sweet and sour. preface, notes from a tilt-a-whirl, n.d. wilson contents preface welcome tickets, please breathing characters talking rocks winter hiatus: breaking teeth unwomb the world the problem of evil and the nonexistence of shakespeare: a paper by hamlet, prince of denmark spring hiatus: butterfly lies your mother was a lizard the problem of kittens: cuteness and beauty summer hiatus: sand castles hell: the final conversation the story gratitude summary n.d. wilson's nonfiction books are wonderful examples of christian belief and practice (worldview) transposed into different genres. every time i read them, they go back on the re-read list. " notes from the tilt-a-whirl focuses on a way of seeing. with this book [ death by living ], the focus is on a way of living, a way of receiving life." death by living, n.d. wilson this book, “notes from the tilt-a-whirl” is a way of seeing the world. it’s a statement of faith. a mosaic of propositions and stories about the world god has made. his other non-fiction book, “death by living” is a way of living in the world. it’s a practical theology. an invitation to receive god’s gifts and embrace them with courageous faith and fierce joy. both are breathtaking expressions of beauty and truth. we need more theology written in genres like this. here is the publisher's summary: a cinematic treatment of worldview: 60 minutes meets "sinners in the hands of an angry god." what is this world? what kind of place is it? the round kind. the spinning kind. the moist kind. the inhabited kind. the kind with flamingos (real and artificial). the kind where water in the sky turns into beautifully symmetrical crystal flakes sculpted by artists unable to stop themselves (in both design and quantity). the kind of place with tiny, powerfully jawed mites assigned to the carpets to eat my dead skin as it flakes off. the kind with people who kill and people who love and people who do both. this world is beautiful but badly broken. i love it as it is, because it is a story, and it isn’t stuck in one place. it is full of conflict and darkness like every good story, a world of surprises and questions to explore. and there’s someone behind it; there are uncomfortable answers to the hows and whys and whats. in the beginning was the word, and the word was with god, and the word was god. through him were all things made... adversaria here (3:06–4:30) the author explains the circumstances that led him to write this unusual statement of faith. new edition here with an added afterword by the author.

headword sehnsucht (zayn-zookht), german, noun. gloss : "inconsolable longing"; an intense yearning for a joy, beauty, or home that seems both remembered and beyond reach "the sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret." the weight of glory, c.s. lewis sense a deep, often sudden longing awakened by beauty, memory, music, landscape, childhood, "northernness," autumn, or some other glimpse of transcendence. in c.s. lewis, it is not simply nostalgia or desire for a particular earthly thing, but the experience of being a creature made for something beyond the present world, "a creature longing for eternity." andrew peterson describes it as the ache bound up with "loss of innocence, the grief of growing up, [and] the ache for the coming kingdom." but what has any of the three, or any mixture of the three, to do with that unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of a bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of the well at the world’s end , the opening lines of kubla khan , the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves? it appeared to me therefore that if a man diligently followed this desire, pursuing the false objects until their falsity appeared and then resolutely abandoning them, he must come out at last into the clear knowledge that the human soul was made to enjoy some object that is never fully given... in our present mode of subjective and spatio-temporal experience. preface, the pilgrim's regress, c.s. lewis gap english "longing" is too broad, "nostalgia" points backward toward something actually possessed, and "homesickness" implies a known home. sehnsucht names a stranger desire: an ache for something difficult to identify and impossible to satisfy fully within ordinary experience. lewis calls it "inconsolable longing." origin german, literally formed from words related to longing and seeking. the term became especially important in german romanticism and entered modern christian literary discussion chiefly through c. s. lewis, for whom experiences of sehnsucht were central to his account in surprised by joy . usage literary, philosophical, and theological writing about longing, beauty, transcendence, joy, and desire for god or eternity; strongly associated in english-language christian writing with c.s. lewis. andrew peterson uses it for moments when beauty or art seems to "ambush someone with sehnsucht," and for experiences in which "we're crying without knowing why." witnesses and every day there were what we called ‘the green hills’; that is, the low line of the castlereagh hills which we saw from the nursery windows. they were not very far off but they were, to children, quite unattainable. they taught me longing, sehnsucht ; made me for good or ill, and before i was six years old, a votary of the blue flower. chapter 1, surprised by joy , c.s. lewis

front cover opening lines this series of lectures was originally produced in audio format for recorded books. i have not changed its style into something more fit for eyes than for ears. it may be worth your while to imagine a voice speaking rather than a pen writing as you read these words. it is not a work of advanced and technical “scholarship” but a bit of “philosophizing,” that is, part of the loving search for wisdom. it is not designed for advanced scholars or graduate students in philosophy but for ordinary people, for “beginners.” its purpose is not to peddle any new theory or ideology about plato or any new explanation of plato and platonism, but simply to matchmake, to get you “hooked.” it treats plato and platonism as a single “big idea,” namely what is usually called plato’s “theory of ideas” or “theory for forms,” and therefore it only peripherally deals with the many important secondary ideas in plato, such as the epistemology of recollection, the policies of aristocracy, or the ethics of the virtues. contents introduction lecture i: the essence of the platonic tradition lecture ii: socrates and myth lecture iii: three additions to plato: aristotle, plotinus, and augustine lecture iv: christian platonism lecture v: nominalism lecture vi: positivism lecture vii: nihilism lecture viii: doors out of plato's cave: signals of transcendence in our world summary from the author: in the first lecture i shall define platonism and its "big idea," the idea of a transcendent reality that the history of philosophy has labeled "platonic ideas" or "platonic forms." in the second lecture we'll briefly explore plato's two basic predecessors, or sources, myth and socrates. then we'll look at 12 applications of the forms in plato's own dialogs. the third lecture will cover the three most important modifications or additions to plato himself in the platonic tradition: aristotle, plotinus, and augustine, each of whom gave the forms a new metaphysical address. the fourth lecture will explore six christian platonists, three in the new testament and three philosophers, justin martyr, bonaventure, and aquinas. (surprise: aquinas, like aristotle, is more of a platonist than the history books tell you.) the next three lectures will explore the consequences of the modern abandoning of platonism, beginning with william of ockham's nominalism, as the source of nearly all modern philosophical errors, and its results in the empiricism of locke and hume, kant's so-called copernican revolution in philosophy, and the so-called "analytic philosophy" which still dominates english and american philosophy departments. in the sixth lecture we'll look at 12 influential kinds of positivism or reductionism in modern thought: in method, history, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, sociology, politics, logic, linguistics, sex, psychology, and theology, exemplified by descartes, machiavelli, hobbes, marx, kant, mill, comte, rousseau, rawls, ayer, derrida, freud, skinner, nietzsche, and sartre. lecture 7 will look at the results of abandoning the platonic tradition in ethics-the values vacuum, or nihilism—in ecclesiastes, pascal, kierkegaard, nietzsche, heidegger, sartre, dostoyevsky, tolstoy, marcel, and buber. in the last lecture we'll look at some experiential evidence for platonism, doors out of the cave that are still open, signals of transcendence. all this in eight short lectures? well, yes; it's a tiny sample of an enormous and commodious storehouse, something like a wine-tasting party. it's meant to begin your thinking and reading, not end it. adversaria author's website here . audiobook with the lectures read by peter kreeft himself here .

front cover opening lines this book has grown out of a practice which was at first my necessity and later my hobby; whether at last it has attained the dignity of a study, others must decide. in my young days when i had to take my pupils through anglo-saxon and middle english texts neither they nor i could long be content to translate a word in the sense which its particular context demanded while leaving the different senses it bore in other places to be memorised, without explanation, as if they were wholly different words. natural curiosity and mnemonic thrift drove us, as it drives others, to link them up and to see, where possible, how they could have radiated out from a central meaning. once embarked, it was impossible not to be curious about the later senses of those which survived into modern english. margins and notebooks thus became steadily fuller. introduction, studies in words , c.s. lewis contents preface 1 introduction 2 nature (with phusis, kind, physical etc.) 3 sad (with gravis) 4 wit (with ingenium) 5 free (with eleutherios, liberal, frank etc.) 6 sense (with sentence, sensibility, and sensible) 7 simple 8 conscience and conscious 9 world 10 life 11 i dare say 12 at the fringe of language notes cross-references verbicide

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plate context marie de' medici had the luxembourg grotto built around 1630, modeled after the nymphaea and fountains that decorated italian gardens. since then it has been known as the "medici fountain." thomas francini, intendant general of waters and fountains of the king, is said to have drawn up the plans. built against the structures that it concealed, the fountain formed, to the east, the end of the long vista running alongside the palace. its facade consisted of three niches separated by columns adorned with bosses and shell decorations, and was crowned by a pediment bearing the arms of france and the medici. it was decorated with river figures commissioned from the sculptor pierre biard. on either side it continued into a wall decorated with arcades. chalgrin, architect of the luxembourg palace, restored it after the revolution with the sculptors ramey, duret, and talamona, and decorated the central niche with a small venus. in 1862, haussmann's construction of the rue de médicis caused the fountain to be moved about thirty meters closer to the palace. the architect alphonse de gisors then had the long basin, about fifty meters in length, constructed in front of it and commissioned new sculptures from ottin. the central niche is occupied by the group representing "polyphemus surprising acis and galatea," while the two side niches contain a faun and a huntress. the rear facade consists of a bas-relief, created in 1807 by valois for the former fountain on the rue du regard, topped by two graceful naiads by the sculptor klagmann. lore #◐ the central sculpture comes from book xiii of ovid's metamorphoses. galatea is a nereid, a sea nymph and daughter of nereus. galatea is in love with acis, a handsome young sicilian shepherd. but polyphemus, the enormous one-eyed cyclops (from the odyssey), has fallen desperately in love with her. ovid makes polyphemus surprisingly comic at first. love has turned this terrifying monster into an awkward suitor. he starts worrying about his appearance. he combs his coarse hair, trims his beard, looks at himself in the water, and composes a long love song for galatea. he boasts about his livestock, his cave, his fruit trees, his milk and cheese, and even two bear cubs he has saved as a present for her. but the comedy gradually becomes threatening. polyphemus knows galatea prefers acis, and his love is intensely possessive. in the same song in which he declares his love for her, he fantasizes about tearing acis apart. this brings us to the precise moment depicted by the medici fountain. the lovers lie beneath the rock while the enormous polyphemus stands above them, preparing to throw the stone that will kill acis. polyphemus discovers acis and galatea together. galatea escapes into the sea. acis runs, but polyphemus tears a massive piece of rock from the mountain and hurls it at him. the rock crushes acis. galatea cannot restore him to human life. instead, she uses her divine power so that his blood becomes water. in ovid's telling, the blood beneath the rock gradually changes into a stream; reeds emerge, water gushes through a crack in the rock, and acis reappears as a river god. from then on, he continues to exist as the sicilian river bearing his name. memory the peacefulness of the fountain catches you off guard after walking through the surrounding streets of paris. then, you read the description on the sign and learn that the tranquil garden fountain ends in a rather violent mythological scene of the jealous cyclops polyphemus discovering galatea with acis. leave it to the french to make a murder scene picturesque and peaceful.

plate context #● the gardens of versailles were transformed for louis xiv beginning in 1661, principally by landscape architect andré le nôtre. covering roughly 2,000 acres, they were conceived as an extension of the palace itself, with immense sightlines, geometric parterres, carefully shaped trees, sculptures, canals, and hundreds of fountains imposing order on the landscape. much of the garden's character comes from its bosquets, enclosed outdoor "rooms" hidden behind hedges. visitors moving through them would suddenly encounter fountains, sculptures, theaters, and other surprises. the scale created unusual engineering challenges too, especially supplying enough water for the fountains, leading to ambitious reservoirs, aqueducts, pumping systems, and the enormous machine de marly on the seine. louis xiv was so particular about how the gardens should be experienced that he personally wrote instructions prescribing the route visitors should take through them. lore #◐ one of the most interesting things about the gardens of versailles is that they were essentially a massive engineering project disguised as a garden. louis xiv wanted an astonishing number of fountains, but versailles sits on relatively flat ground and had no adequate natural water supply. engineers eventually built the enormous machine de marly, a system of waterwheels and pumps on the seine, to help supply versailles. even then, there often wasn't enough water to run all the fountains simultaneously. during louis xiv's walks, fountain keepers reportedly coordinated with one another so that the fountains near the king were turned on as he approached and shut off after he passed. memory i remember sitting in the gardens at versailles watching the fountains move in time with the music. each display was relatively short, almost like a little performance scattered throughout the gardens. we'd stop, watch the water rise and fall with the music, and then wander on to find the next one.

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