The Equinox (Volume III, Number I)

THE EQUINOX So thinks the ‘worm,’ and so he does. The only detail in which his scheme goes wrong is that his wife manages, against all odds, to survive her miscarriage. All this time, the ‘worm’ himself is living with a German prostitute; and, as he finds this expensive, he tries to keep the wolf from the door by getting this un- fortunate woman to copy out various items from the works of his wife’s lover, which are not very well known in America, and she proceeds to hawk them about New York. The man whose property they are will not be likely to hear of it, as the inexplicable conduct of Alice has more or less broken his heart, and he has become a sort of hermit. But the wife turns up again like a bad penny. The ‘worm’ has by this time got rather tired of the German girl, and he goes off to Chicago after another woman, leaving his wife and his mistress to share a room at the McAlpin. In- stead of quarreling, they made Friends, and the wholly icily murderous plot is laid bare. Alice now makes strenuous efforts to get back her lover, but he is one of those people who learn by experience. He merely exposes the ‘worm’s’ attempt to pirate his property. It seems to us that Dr. Coomaraswamy leaves the story at what might have been its most interesting complication. It stops right there. The ‘worm’ gets a job as curator of the Oriental Department of some Art Museum in Boston, and settles down with his wife to live happy ever after. I feel that this may be life, but it is not art. A Mourner Crap In GREEN. Four Dimensionat Vistas. By CLaupe Bracpon. Alfred A. Knopf, 1916. Ir is a great pleasure to read this book, for although in some points we may find ourselves obliged to disagree with the author, the general effect is that a perusal leaves one with the feeling of having been at home; that is to say, on the planes of pure and exalted thought. We cannot say that Mr. Bragdon is in any sense an original thinker, as Hinton was, but he has done something to extend and pop- ularize Hinton’s ideas. Some of the analogies in this book are very illuminating. Unfortunately, as it appears to us, Mr. Bragdon is tied up with theosophical dog- mas. He talks about the ‘new freedom,’ and bases his whole argument on the idea that the material world is a shadow show. Yet he seems to think that the real (that is, the ideal) world is more easy of apprehension, if we bind ourselves hand and foot by the senseless and cruel taboos of the most primitive tribes. He also errs, as it seems to us, in placing the yogi whose attainment is wholly selfish above the man of genius. Blavatsky made no such error. She placed the poet above the adept. In spite of his prave ’orts, Mr. Bragdon is not a clear thinker like Hinton. He is just a little bourgeois who has put on Hinton’s hat, and it comes down very far indeed over his eyes. He cannot see that the interpretation of phenomena as 204