68 
MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS 
the profane reader dismiss such subtleties from his mind as 
negligible nonsense. It is cunning of this kind that determines 
the price of potatoes. 
The above digression is perhaps not so inexcusable as it 
may seem on a first reading. Careful study of it should reveal 
the nature of the thought-processes which are habitually used 
by the secret Masters of the human race to determine its 
destiny. 
When everyone has done laughing, I will ask you to 
compare the real effects produced on the course of human 
affairs by Caesar, Attila, and Napoleon, on the one hand; of 
Plato, the Encyclopaedists, and Karl Marx3 on the other. 
The Yellow School of Magick considers, with complete 
scientific and philosophical detachment, the fact of the 
Universe as a fact. Being itself a part of that Universe, it 
realizes its impotence to alter the totality in the smallest 
degree. To put it vulgarly, it does not try to raise itself from 
the ground by pulling at its socks. It therefore opposes to the 
current of phenomena no reaction either of hatred or of 
sympathy. So far as it attempts to influence the course of 
events at all, it does so in the only intelligent way 
conceivable: it seeks to diminish internal friction. 
It remains, therefore, in a contemplative attitude. To use 
the terms of Western philosophy, there is in its attitude 
something of the stoicism of Zeno; or of the Pickwickianism, 
if I may use the term, of Epicurus. The ideal reaction to 
phenomena 
is that of perfect elasticity. It possesses 
something of the cold-bloodedness of mathematics; and for 
this reason it seems fair to say, for the purposes of 
elementary study, that Pythagoras is its most adequate 
exponent in European philosophy. 
Since the discovery of Asiatic thought, however, we have 
3. It is interesting to note that the three greatest influences in the world to-day 
are those of Teutonic Hebrews: Marx, Hertz and Freud.