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Page 220 of 2251929 · PDF PAGE 456
… None arrived for five days; and that although nothing had gone wrong in London. No explanation was ever forthcoming. This is one of the many incidents tending to similar conclusions, all explicable only on the theory that the natural energy, which is normally present and is necessary to the occurrence of certain types of event, had somehow been inhibited. The Jupiterian phenomena were especially remarkable. We performed in all sixteen operations to invoke this force. It seemed at first as if our work actually increased the normal inertia. Jupi…
1904 · PDF PAGE 7
…elley himself recognised this later: hence the direct and simple vigour of the “Masque of Anarchy.” It has often puzzled atheists that a man of Milton’s genius could have written as he did of Christianity . But we m ust not forget that Milton lived immediately after the m ost important Revolution in Religion and Politics of modern times : Shelley on the brink of such another Political upheaval. Shake- speare alone sat enthroned above it all like a god, and is not lost in the mire of contro- versy.* This, also, though “I’m no Shakes- peare, as t…
1929 · PDF PAGE 395
…acks on me in the press which followed the publication of the novel. I could not foresee the exact form which these various forces would manifest, but I understood the sort of thing I might expect. I decided to take the journey rather than wait for a time when a more encouraging symbol might be given. I felt that in the circumstances I had no right to expect anything better. The symbol promised success. I ought not to complain at paying its price. So much for what I can do. Now for what I can't. I used to test my methods by predicting the cours…
1929 · PDF PAGE 305
…s no proper accommodations had been provided to house them. In six months only five hundred were left. On March 14th we left Mengtsz for Manhao on the Red River --- three days' easy travelling. The very first night, an unpleasant incident took place. Wilkinson had made me promise on no account to strike any of the men but to rely on him to punish any misconduct when they returned to Yunnanfu. It seemed as if they knew of this compact and the Great God Wilkinson seemed very far off to them. I could feel instinctively that the respect, akin to go…
1929 · PDF PAGE 176
176 At Cambridge one of my most intimate friends was a man named Parez of Emmanuel, and in him I recognized a supreme trencherman. One Saturday I had been held up at Hitchin, my racing roadster having sprung a leak. I got back to Cambridge too late to order brunch from the kitchens, so on Sunday morning there was nothing for it but to go round to Parez and see if he could feed me. To my joy, I found him reading and smoking by the side of a table spread with a brunch for six, conceived in a spirit of gargantuan hospitality. I invited myself, of …
1929 · PDF PAGE 175
…ilarating.) It is a voluptuous flattery like the murmurous applause of a refined multitude, with the instinctive ecstatic reverence of a man conscious of his unworthiness entering paradise. At the top of the curtain is the basin from which it proceeds, the largest of several similar formations. It is some thirty-one feet in diameter, an almost perfect circle. The depth in the middle is little over two feet. It is a bath for Venus herself. I had to summon my consciousness of godhead before venturing to invade it. The water streams delicately wit…
1929 · PDF PAGE 217
…. It was long before I understood that all explanations of the universe are ultimately interchangeable like the geometries of Euclid, Riemann and Lobatchewsky. So much for July. But early in August, Gerald Kelly wrote suggesting that I should join his party at Strathpeffer. I had nothing better to do. Red-headed Arabella was still in Edinburgh; I was being bored to death, either by my meditation or by my inability to rouse myself to the point of doing any. So I packed a bag and went over. The party consisted principally of Kelly's mother, who w…
1929 · PDF PAGE 147
147 The fact is that the vast majority of people are absolutely impervious to facts. Test the average man by asking him to listen to a simple sentence which contains one word with associations to excite his prejudices, fears or passions --- he will fail to understand what you have said and reply by expressing his emotional reaction to the critical word. It was long before I understood this fact of psychology. Even to this day, it surprises me that there should be minds {253} which are unable to accept any impression equably and critically. I ha…
1929 · PDF PAGE 150
…50 In course of time I arrived at Madras, which is sleepy, sticky and provincial. On one of my steamship journeys I had met a delightful man named harry Lambe, who had invited me to come and stay with him in Calcutta. It fitted in ideally and I booked my passage by the steamer Dupleix. It would have been more natural to go by train; but part of my plan in wandering about the world was to put myself in unpleasant situations on purpose, provided that they were new. This small French boat offered an adventure. A storm was raging; the Dupleix was s…
1929 · PDF PAGE 403
…e of entirely unsupported suspicion of so horrible a crime proved that it must be justified. It was the psychology of the Middle Ages. A man might or might not be guilty of murder, but witchcraft was so unimaginable an abomination that it was unthinkable that anyone could accuse people of it unless it were true. I remembered the case of Eckenstein. He had committed a crime too frightful to put into words and therefore he must be guilty. I had found it much the same with myself. Nobody seemed to care whether I had or had not done various things …
1929 · PDF PAGE 530
…ith apparently nonsensical passages. One must know what the author is likely to mean by any given phrase, and this can only be done my a man who has intimate experience of the spiritual states and magical principles set forth. Otherwise, the translator is in the position of a scholar ignorant of football who should try to translate some slangy description of a cup tie. He will think that "wing" has something to do with a bird and be puzzled as to how it got into the game; a "hot shot" will set him thinking of the siege of Gibraltar, and the res…
1907 · PDF PAGE 134
…n inverts as In-Gram and F66-Té, such puritanical broken-bottle-throwers as Victor Rayson and Lord Groberts, we find that the name of the Man of Sorrows may be spelt with any letter in the alphabet; but that to replace Adrian’s barge by the LC.C. privy is a crime that should carry with it instantaneous decapitation. Captain Fuller will have none of this; with a. ripple of virgin laughter he at once rips the rational bloomers from the unwashed Bacon of the Rev. Secularius Shake speare, and strips every button from the unsexed knickerbockers of Mr…
1929 · PDF PAGE 98
…c to the time. made to work by those who understand and know how to apply them. Shallow critics argue that because the average untrained man cannot evoke a spirit, the ritual which purports to enable him to do so must be at fault. He does not reflect that an electroscope would be useless in the hands of a savage. Indubitably, Magick is one of the subtlest and most difficult of the sciences and arts. There is more opportunity for errors of comprehension, judgment and practice than in any other branch of physics. It is above all needful for the s…
1929 · PDF PAGE 411
… to live so that the petty problems of every day are as few and easily dispatched as possible --- all these measures have made me less a man than the Spirit of Solitude. Every impression I receive is interpreted more analytically and yields a more intense integration than a thousand such to most other men. My life has been calm, simple, free from unusual or exciting incidents, and yet I often feel that I have lived more fully than many men of affairs. Another result has naturally been that I have learnt to assess experiences by a totally differ…
1929 · PDF PAGE 77
…absurdities as excrescences on Christianity, but they are of the essence of the religion. The whole theory of the atonement implies that man can set up his own will in opposition to God's, and thereby excites Him to anger which can only be pacified by the sacrifice of His son. It is, after all, quite as reasonable to think of God as being irritated by a shipbuilding programme as by idolatry. The tendency has, in fact, been to forget about the atonement altogether and to represent Jesus as a "Master" whose teachings are humanitarian and enlighte…
1929 · PDF PAGE 350
…ficiency of the arrangement may doubtless be increased by practice and the use of mnemonics, but sooner or later one comes to the end. A man of forty who has devoted every moment of his time to acquiring knowledge finds almost certainly that he has no more pigeon-holes available, and that therefore he cannot acquire any new knowledge except by forgetting some of the old. {566} This, by the way, shows the tremendous importance of selective study. One of the few gleams of intelligence shown in the works of Conan Doyle is where Sherlock Holmes is …
1929 · PDF PAGE 167
…f the India Office is as much to be dreaded as the silly sentimentalism of sympathizers with "national aspirations", "the brotherhood of man" and all such bunkum. In India the rules of caste assured the poorest peasant a livelihood of sorts, bar famine and plague, and the future of his children was as certain as sunrise. In Anglo-Saxon civilization no one has any guarantee against economic earthquakes and the future of his family is pure gambling. Such is the price of what we call progress. We cannot even assign a meaning to the word; because n…
1929 · PDF PAGE 576
…"I saw a great light. "Heaven help me for a fool," I cried. "You can't be my Mencken at all!" Explanations took place. He was a business man from South Africa. At this moment Harrison strolled up and we all enjoyed the joke over more brandy and still bigger cigars. When the real Mencken turned up, the tale of the conversation wagged out the message --- Jane Burr. This lady had recently arrived in London and created a silly-season scandal by walking about in knickerbockers. On this frail foundation, she had erected a superstructure of sexual eth…
1929 · PDF PAGE 580
…evote his mathematical abilities to demonstrating the sublimity of the origin of The Book of the Law having failed, I bethought me of Norman Mudd. Since the skirmish at Cambridge, he had sunk below the horizon, having emigrated to the most barbarous and benighted realms of perdition; he had in fact become lecturer in applied mathematics at Grey University College, Bloemfontein. All these years, his conscience had never ceased to accuse him in respect of his conduct at Cambridge. He thought of it as the "great betrayal". For my part, I find ever…
1929 · PDF PAGE 144
…ing him by occasional excursions after big game. I may as well go back a little in time and record my general impressions of Ceylon as a man of the world, in connected sequence. I was as full of romantic folly about the wisdom of the East, and the splendours and luxuries of Asia, as I had been about Jacobites. But already I had learnt to use my eyes; prejudices had somehow lost their power to persuade. My experience of the Order probably counted for a good deal in this. At the same time, I did not swing from one extreme to the other. "Blessed a…