—  7  — 
dust on the horizon which may mark its position.  “ Does Mr. Crowley suppose 
that the Buddhists do not feel the poetical nature of the books of religion ?  ”  
I take this to mean :  “ You have no business to take the Bible literally ! ” 
I have dealt with this contention at some length in the “ Sword of Song ” 
itself (Ascension Day, lines 216 to 247)  :  but here I will simply observe that a 
poem which authorises the Archbishop of Canterbury to convey Dr. Clifford’s 
pet trowels, and makes possible the Gilbertian (in the old sense of pertaining 
to W. S. Gilbert) position of the Free Kirk to-day, is a poem which had better 
be burnt, as the most sensible man of his time proposed to do with Homer, or 
at least left to the collector, as I believe is the case with the publications of the 
late Isidore Liseux.  Immoral is indeed no word for it.  It is as criminal as the 
riddle in “ Pericles.” 
That our Pantosympatheticist is himself an Agnostic does not excuse him. 
True, if every one thought as he does there would be no formal religion in the 
world, but only that individual communion of the consciousness with its self-
consciousness which constitutes genuine religion, and should never inflame passion 
or inspire intolerence, since the non-Ego lies beyond its province. 
But he knows as well as I do that there are thousands in this country who 
would gladly see him writhing in eternal torture — that physiological impossibi-
lity — for his word “ a casual carpenter,” albeit he wrote it in reverence.  That 
is the kind of Christian I would hang.  The Christian who can write as Our Cham-
pion of Christendom does about his faith is innocuous and pleasant, though in 
my heart I am compelled to class him with the bloodless desperadoes of the 
“ Order of the White Rose ” and the “ moutons enragés ” that preach revo-
lution in Hyde Park. 
When he says that he will trace “ the outlines of two vast and mystical phi-
losophies which if they were subtly and slowly worked out, etc., etc.,” he is 
simply thrown away on Nonconformity ;  and I trust I do not go too far, as the 
humblest member of the Rationalist Press Association, when I suggest that that  
diabolical body would be delighted to bring out a sixpenny edition of his book.  
I am not fighting pious opinions.  But there are perfectly definite acts which 
encroach upon the freedom of the individual :  indefensible in themselves, they 
seek apology in the Bible, which is now to be smuggled through as a “ poem.”  If 
I may borrow my adversary’s favourite missle, a poem in this sense is “ unhis-
torical nonsense ”. 
We should, perhaps, fail to appreciate the beauty of the Tantras if the 
Government (on their authority) enforced the practices of hook-swinging and 
Sati, and the fact that the cited passages were of doubtful authority, and ambi-