Konx Om Pax

In spite of Mr. Crowley’s disdain of correct metre and his occasional lapses in grammar, pages of praise could be written on his work, backed by quotations from it. J. E. PATTERSON. THE NEW AGE says: What is this wonderful abstraction we call the British public? Before Mafeking night we knew quite well what it was. The female part of it was Mrs. Grundy, the well-known old lady in white cotton stockin , elastic-side boots, stuffy petticoats, and a grim determination to give everyone a bit of her mind. The male gart of it was an idealistic old gentleman of prolific habits with a thetic faith in the ritish constitution, and a habit of locking up the house at ten o’c ock every weekday and at half-past nine on Sunday. This British Androgyne has vanished, and we are ruled instead by a protean monster whom we worship under the name of Public Opinion. Every class has its own opinion, for are we not a free country? London has its “ Liza of Lambeth ” set, its Marie Corelli set, its Arthur Wing Pinero set, its Geo e Bernard Shaw set, its Sir William Crooks set, its Royal smart set, its Lord Kelvin set, its individual pleuure seekers, its perverts, its literary, artistic, religious, and philosophical specialists. It is a hydra-headed monster, this London Opinion, but we should not be at all surprised to see an almost unparalleled event, namely, everyone of those hydra-heads moving with a single purpose, and that the denunciation of Mr. Aleister Crowley and all his works. Now this would be a remarkable achievement for a young gentleman who only left Cambridge quite a few years ago. It requires a certain amount of serious urpose to stir Public Opinion into active opposition, and the only (iuestion is, has Mr. rowley aserious purpose? Our first instinctive feeling is that “ t is damned clever, but it won’t do. ' hat is succeeded by the certainty that “ It is raving madness ”; and a final judgment that the young man is a remarkable product of an unremarkable age. The writing is not sane; but we have long ago outworn the illusion that sanity is a symptom of cleverness. Still, the writer has the serious fault common to Browning and Shaw: he is incapable of a clear, straightforward statement. We all have met the old lady who, in trying to recount some personal adventures, wanders off into the biographies of everyone mentioned, and eventually forgets to tell us the point of her sto . We sufier from this in Mr. Shaw’s plays and in Browning’s “ Sordello." Are we willing to suffer from it in order to discover the secret of Mr. Crowley’s mind? Is the game worth the candle? The time of year being August and the weather inclement, we are inclined to think it possibly may be. Now is the appointed season, so let us hasten to study the world of Mr. Crowley before the rush of our own lives reabsorbs us. Our principal objection to Mr. Crowley’s style is that it is redundant. For instance, the organs of eneration are always cropping up in unexpected places, such as in Mr. Crowley’s brain—which is said to be pregnant—and in Rosa Mundi's heart—which contains a symbol sadly out of place anatomically. All this reminds us of the ways of little bo s; but surely Mr. Crowley might suppress these symptoms of the extreme youth 0 the virile spirit, and discipline his imagination with a study of the se rate functions of the separate organs of the body. We are quite aware that the old allacy that sex is the source of all the passion of the human race supports Mr. Crowley and his laudatory critic Captain Fuller in their tendency to use sexual imagery in excess; but surely the fallacy has been exploded. We have all read Weininger, who demonstrates that alarge proportion of the human race have no special sex characteristics; that the absolutely female woman or virile man can hardly be said to exist at all; but that the border line between the physiological symptoms of sex is becoming less marked in each generation. There is a force of dominance universally manifest, but that force is exercised by every living creature; it impenetrales the kingdoms of the sea and land and air; and sex is only a small part of its purpose. However, Mr. Crowley has chosen to focus his attention on sex, and Captain Fuller has dutifully followed him in 144 pages. On the whole, we think Mr. Crowley may be congratulated. He man es to describe the utmost excess of desire when a rejected lover possesses and fin-Sly IO