1907 · CLOSE READING
Konx Om Pax
Konx Om Pax (1907), PDF p. 83
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OR, THE SYNAGOGUE
OF SATAN
63
and
the infidel faith,
each may follow without
inclination;
for he will no longer plunge into his
was a prostitute
from native passion may indulge
with safety in the pleasure of love; she who was by nature cold may
enjoy
a virginity
in
no wise
marred
by her
disciplinary
course of
unchastity.
But the one will understand
and love the other.
“I have
been taxed with
assaulting
what
is commonly
known
as
virtue.
True; I hate
it,
but only in the same degree as
I
hate what
is
commonly
known
as vice.
“ So
it
must be acknowledged
that one who
is
but slightly unbalanced
needs
a
milder correction
than whoso
is
obsessed by prejudice.
There
are men who make
a
fetish
of cleanliness; they shall work in
a
fitter’s
shop, and learn that dirt
is
the mark of honourable
toil.
There
are
those
whose
lives
are
rendered
wretched
by the
fear of infection;
they
see
bacteria
of the deadliest
sort
in all
things
but the actual
solutions
of carbolic
acid
and
mercuric
chloride with
which
they
hysterically combat
their invisible foemen;
such would
I
send to live
in the bazaar at Delhi, where
they shall haply learn
that dirt makes
little difl'erence after all.
“There are slow men who
need
a
few
months’
experience
of the
bustle of the stockyards; there are business men in a hurry, and
they
shall travel in Central Asia to acquire the art of repose.
“So much
for the equilibrium, and for two months
in every year
each member
of your governing classes shall undergo
this training
under skilled advice.
“ But what of the Great Tao? For one month in every year each of
these men shall seek desperately
for the
Stone
of the
Philosophers.
By solitude and fasting for the social and
luxurious,
by drunkenness
and debauch for the austere, by scourging for those afraid of physical
pain,
by repose for the restless, and toil for the idle,
by bull-fights
for the humanitarian,
and the care of little children for the callous,
by
rituals
for the rational, and
by philosophy for
the
credulous,
shall
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