Confessions of Aleister Crowley

535 They have learnt the psychological fact that confidence is a real asset. A man works best when he feels he is sure to succeed. A fear of failure palsies every faculty. The vogue of Christian Science, and countless cults for drawing in dollars by wishing one had them, persuading oneself that somehow or other they will arrive, scorning every success, forgetting every failure, shutting one's eyes to unpleasant facts, and interpreting every bit of good luck as a triumph beyond the power of trumpets to tell --- a token of the intense interest taken by the Almighty in His favourite child --- this course of conduct, though its more reasonable practitioners are ready to admit that it is rant and rubbish, is pursued as part of a calculated policy. They are ready to fool themselves in order to take advantage of the stimulating effect of optimism. The other side of the medal is this: when any man points to any fact that shakes this opium serenity, checks this cocaine self-assurance, that man takes a chance of a free ride out of town on a rail. The spirit of criticism is detested and dreaded. It is easy to understand why this is. The States have been won from the wilderness by a system which demanded courage and clear sight from the pioneers; but once the trail was blazed, the rest of the work was done on a basis of credit which a European banker would consider utterly reckless gambling. Everyone, from the farmer and merchant to the manufacturer and financier, entered into a tacit agreement to bet that any given enterprise would succeed. As the natural resources were there, while luck decreed that the commonwealth should not have to face any overwhelming obstacle, the gamblers have won. It is obvious that any man in an outpost besieged by nature (such as is every new settlement outside New England, the Atlantic coast and the old settlements in the south) was really a traitor if he said, however truthfully, anything which might daunt the spirit of his comrades. Those men won out through sheer ignorance of the chances against them, stolid stupidity which blinded them to their desperate plight and bestial insensibility to the actual hardships which they had to endure. It was criminal to insist on the existence of evils for which there was no remedy. This spirit has persisted, though its utility is past. It has become a fixed feature of the religion of the country. It was the deadliest delusion that I had to meet. Spiritual attainment, magical; development, any line of work {844} soever whose material is subtler than the sensible world, demands (as the first condition of success) the most severe spirit of scepticism, the most scientific system of research. For immediately one becomes aware of impressions and ideas which are not subject to the criticism of sensory perception, they are inevitably influenced by the individual characteristics of the observer and the distortion is difficult to detect because, until one is very advanced indeed, one is not aware of the aberration caused by the error of the instrument. Even in the world of sense, similar troubles occur. To a man who is colour-blind, the red light is "really" green --- beyond his power to make any correction, because the source of his error is in the instrument of sight itself. He might well say, "But if, as you tell me, this green lamp is red, how do I know that it is a lamp, not a tiger? I have only my eyes to depend on." I found it impossible to persuade even the most intelligent people who came to me to take the first step --- that of clearing the ground of their minds of every preconceived idea. They yearned for me to fill them up to the neck with any ridiculous rubbish that flattered their vanity, fed their folly, doped their dread of death and damnation, and inflated their idle fancies, intoxicated their inane ideals. I simply hammered away with cold common sense. I drenched them with douches of doubt. I pricked their bladders of bluff; I tapped their dropsical sentimentality and applied a clyster of candour to the constipation of their respectability. By this simple expedient I drove them all away. I made myself enemies everywhere. The crowd of charlatans were particularly annoyed. They were eager to hail me as their master and even to give me the lion's share of the swag. It hurt them horribly when they found I would not play the game, or even take the trouble to hail them to my barn door. Every people has the prophets it deserves; the credulous cowardly ice-cream-soda idealist is best left with the illiterate illuminati, rascally Rosicrucians, magpie mediums, parrot psychics, and cockroach clairvoyants with whom they feel at home. One cannot initiate imbeciles. My adventures in Detroit came as the climax which confirmed the conclusions I had already formed from casual conversations and correspondence with a fairly large and varied selection of would-be